Dr. Joseph Mercola believes that love and intimacy – not just the physical form with a significant other but also the emotional form occurring between families, friends and even strangers – can protect and heal us from disease. Studies show that when people express love and feel loved they tend to:

• live longer
• feel happier
• have better cardiovascular health
• be more productive
• be less anxious and depressed
• become less likely to drink alcohol or do drugs

Love is a wonderful thing but it can also be agonizing and destructive. Many health experts, including Dr. Mercola, now regard lovesickness as a serious health concern. Lovesickness can cause people to feel weak and destabilized, and in extreme cases, put them in an extreme sense of despair, depression, hopelessness and physical exhaustion.

Studies show that relationship problems can have a negative effect on mental and physical health, and can be particularly hard on women. Women experiencing severe stress from marriage difficulties were times more prone to heart attack than peers without such stresses.

Heartache is very real. Stress stemming from emotional events may even be worse for your body than the stress from non-emotional events, even though both evoke the same types of responses, Mercola explains.

So how do you deal with heartache and the stress that accompanies it?

Stress is a main contributing factor in any illness and it’s impossible to completely eliminate it from your life. Since stress will always be there, what you can do is to look for ways to adjust your body’s ability to tolerate it. Dr. Mercola recommends energy psychology tools like the Emotional Freedom Technique to deal with depression and stress.

Knowing how to give and receive love will lead to a happier and healthier life so take care of your heart.

However, eating is not something that should be rushed because it leads to stressful, unhealthy living.

Nutrition and fitness expert Marc David, founder and director of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, points out that Americans tend to eat under a state of stress and anxiety. You could be eating the healthiest food available but you won’t necessarily be digesting and assimilating it properly because eating under stress puts your body in the opposite condition of where it should be in order to digest and assimilate food.

Eating under stress causes dramatic changes in your body’s metabolism, including:

• Slower nutrient absorption
• Excretion of nutrients, particularly water soluble vitamins, macrominerals and microminerals
• Spike in blood cholesterol
• Increased food sensitivity
• Decreased gut flora population
• Heartburn
• Increase in cortisol and insulin

The hormones cortisol and insulin track each other. When cortisol increases, insulin decreases. The two hormones signal your body to store fat and stop building muscle, effectively causing weight gain.

The simple act of taking time to eat a meal can have a profound effect on your health. Here are the reasons why you should start eating slower:

1. Weight loss – It takes about 20 minutes for your brain to realize that your stomach is full. David explains that if you eat too fast, your brain will often interpret that missed experience of nuances and pleasure in taste and aroma as hunger, which will lead to you eating more. If you eat a big meal but don’t pay attention to it and just devour it, you’ll notice that your belly feels full but your mouth still feels hungry. Eating slowly will give you time to realize that you’re full and signal you to stop on time.
2. Relaxation – Ever wonder why Europeans, who consume more wine and fat in their diet, manage to stay slimmer than Americans? That’s because they take their time while eating and treat meals as a celebration. They shut down work and take two-hour lunches. Eating with friends and family helps lower stress and allows people to relax and enjoy food as a gastronomic pleasure.
3. Better digestion – Digestion starts in your mouth; the more work you do there, the less work your stomach has to put in to effectively digest your food. Eating slower means chewing your food properly, which helps you break down your food better.
4. Breaking free from the fast food culture and fast-paced lifestyle – Americans are crazy about all things fast – fast cars, fast computers, fast mobile phones, and fast food, which unfortunately, is a fast route towards obesity. Break free from the on-the-go lifestyle that is dehumanizing America, making people unhealthy, stressed out and unhappy. You deserve better.

Eating is not just something to do but something to experience. The simple act of eating slower will lead to a healthier and happier you.

Americans tend to eat under a state of stress and anxiety, says Marc David, director of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. When you are eating under the physiological stress response, you could be eating the healthiest food but you won’t necessarily be digesting, assimilating and burning the calories from that food.

When under the physiological stress response, your heart rate goes up and your blood pressure rises. Blood is shunted away from your midsection and goes to your arms, legs, and head. Your digestion also completely shuts down.

In relation to digestion, stress causes:

• cortisol and insulin levels to rise
• as much as four times less blood flow to your digestive system, leading to decreased metabolism
• decreased flow of oxygen and decreased enzyme production (up to 20,000-fold) to your gut
• decreased nutrient absorption
• water soluble vitamins, macrominerals, microminerals and calcium to be excreted and wasted
• a spike in your cholesterol and triglyceride levels
• an increased risk of food sensitivity or heartburn
• decreased gut flora population

Corisol and insulin are two hormones that tend to track each other. When your cortisol levels consistently rise under a chronic low-level stress response, you’ll likely have problems losing weight and building muscle.

The worse part is, with rising cortisol, you’ll tend to gain weight around your midsection. Body fat, particlularly visceral fat (fat around your midsection that gathers around your internal organs), increases your risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Eating under stress puts your body in the opposite state of where it needs to be so it can digest food, assimilate nutrients and burn calories. In short, eating under stress is a recipe for weight gain!

So what can you do to avoid eating under stress?

Stress management is an important part of optimizing your overall health. Though it is not possible to completely eliminate stress, there are several ways that will help you minimize the stressors that seriously disrupt your digestion and other important bodily functions.

Here are some stress-busting strategies:

• Use the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Meridian tapping helps restore your mind and body’s balance by clearing emotional blockages from your system.
• Exercise is another effective and natural way of providing your body with relief from stress. Endorphins, your body’s “feel good” chemicals are released into your brain during exercise.
• Get proper sleep.
• Meditate.

But Mercola knows when to take a break from the rigors of daily life and manage his stress levels. After all, a number of studies have found that stress is a contributing factor in disease.

There is a direct link between stress and the impairment of body systems. Stress has actual and measurable negative effects on blood pressure, brain chemistry, cholesterol, blood sugar levels, joint function and hormonal balance.

One of the easiest ways to reduce stress is to have a good laugh. That’s the reason why people say that laughter is the best medicine.

Did you know that besides April Fools’ Day, April is also National Humor Month? Here are some reasons why laughter is a good stress management strategy:

• Laughter helps regulate certain hormones – It increases the levels of health-enhancing hormones like endorphins (the body’s natural pain relievers) while reducing the level of stress hormones like cortisol, epinephrine (adrenaline), dopamine and growth hormone. Laughter also increases the number of antibody-producing cells and enhances the effectiveness of T cells, helping boost your immune system and lessen the physical effects of stress.
• Laughter provides an internal workout – A good belly laugh allows you to exercise your diaphragm, contracts your abs and even works out the shoulders, leaving your muscles more relaxed. Laughter can provide a good workout for your heart and its aerobic effects help increase your body’s ability to use oxygen.
• Laughter might be beneficial for patients with type 2 diabetes – Japanese researchers noticed a significantly smaller spike in blood sugar after a meal when diabetics watched a popular comedy program.
• Laughter provides physical and emotional release – A good laugh often gives you a “cleansed feeling.”
• Laughter provides distraction—and takes your attention away from anger, guilt, stress and negative emotions in a more beneficial way than other mere distractions.
• Laughter gives you a more lighthearted perspective – Studies show that your response to stressful events can be altered by whether you view something as a ‘threat’ or a ‘challenge.’ Laughter helps you view events as challenges rather than threats, making them less threatening and more positive.
• Laughter provides social benefits – and allows you to connect with others. A 2000 study showed that laughter was 30 times more frequent in social than solitary situations. Laughter is contagious; the more you laugh, the more you can make others around you laugh and experience these health benefits as well. This will help you positively influence their mood, help reduce their stress levels, and perhaps improve the quality of social interaction you have with them.