Winter work out is better than summer sweat

According to personal trainers and exercise physiologists, the body's primary goal is to maintain stasis, or stability, and that includes keeping a steady temperature. In the cold, the body needs to burn extra fat, to produce energy to heat it back up to the ideal temperature.

Working out in the cold weather can shake off some extra calories. During the winter, the body ramps up its production of a chemical called ATLPL, which helps it to store up fat for the evolutionary scarce season, so staying active in the winter is important to counteracting that.

Working out in the cold makes it difficult for the body to stay warm and burn a ton of calories, the cold acts as a 'thermal stressor,' forcing the body's temperature regulation out of work. To keep the core, vital organs at the right temperature, blood flow to the extremities is reduced, and kept concentrated closer to the heart and internal organs.

The heart rate and metabolism slow, trying to save up energy and keep the warm blood in place. That's when the shivering starts. Those shakes are a series of fast muscle contractions and releases, a way for the body to produce some extra warmth by burning energy stored in fat.

When you get into a relatively consistent, high intensity workout - though you'll feel like you're working harder at first, against your slower heart rate and metabolism - the body begins warming up from more robust fat burning. As your heart rate rises, blood and warmth return to your hands, feet and other extremities, and shivering is no longer necessary.

Once you hit that point, you're burning calories as you would during exercise at any temperature. During the winter, the body crave extra simple carbohydrates found in sugary foods like baked goods and get vitamin D deficient spending too much time indoors. Getting some winter sun will boost your vitamin D to break those sweet indulgences.

Walking in moderately warm clothing on a cold day will keep the heart rate from getting high enough to cancel out the shivers, but enough activity is require for burning some fat for energy. Body temperature will be  lower when you are closer to the cold while playing in the snow, making the body ready to fight to stay warm.
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Effects of maternal stress on fetus

Maternal stress during the second trimester of pregnancy may influence the nervous system of the developing child, both before and after birth, and may have subtle effects on temperament, resulting in less smiling and engagement, as well as diminished ability to regulate emotions. Researchers looked at the stress levels of many low-to-middle-income women who were between 12 and 24 weeks pregnant. The researchers followed the women throughout pregnancy and after delivery, and conducted a test to compare their reported stress levels during pregnancy with objective levels of stress in their 6-month-old offspring.

In the test, the infants' cardiac function was monitored while the mothers were instructed to look at the infant's face but not interact with or touch them for two minutes following a brief play session. The mothers reported the number of stressful life events they had experienced during pregnancy, which included illness, relationship problems, housing difficulties and legal issues. The babies of mothers with the highest number of these stressful life events who completed the testing were 22 percent more reactive than the infants of mothers reporting the lowest number of stressful life events. They also recovered less quickly from the stressor, demonstrating lower resilience.

High reactivity, which is assessed by measuring the variability in the heart rate in conjunction with breathing, is indicative of a stronger decrease in parasympathetic nervous system activity in response to challenge, The parasympathetic nervous system enables the body to rest and digest food, by slowing the heart rate and increasing intestinal and glandular activity. Being highly reactive places children at risk for a range of psychopathological problems, particularly anxiety and depression, as well as externalizing problems, such as disruptive behavior, especially if they experience adverse family and school environments.

However, in an optimal environment with few adversities, children with higher stress reactivity don't have their stress response triggered too often and may exhibit better-than-average social skills and emotional and behavioral well-being, because greater reactivity can make them more sensitive to the benefits of positive relationships and experiences in their environments. Those who had higher levels of perceived stress in pregnancy and post-delivery, had babies with temperamental surgency levels that were 8 percent lower than those babies of mothers in the lower third, who reported less perceived stress in pregnancy and post-delivery.

Surgency includes traits such as willingness to approach and engage with the outside world, as well as laughter and smiles. These same babies born to the highly-stressed mothers were also found to have eight percent lower levels of self-regulation, the ability to manage emotions – such as soothing themselves in periods of high stress  compared with the babies of mothers with less perceived stress during pregnancy and post-delivery. This combination of lower surgency and lower self-regulation can place individuals at added risk for depression, anxiety and difficulties with their social relationships.
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Cognitive behavioural therapy for chronic pain

Cognitive behavioral therapy CBT offers effective, safer, alternative to opioids for chronic pain treatment. Rising use of opioid medications to treat chronic noncancer pain is a major contributor to opioid crisis. But despite the aggressive marketing and prescribing of these powerful painkillers, there has been little change in the amount and severity of pain.

CBT is an important alternative to opioids for treatment of chronic pain. The goal of CBT is to help patients change the way they think about and manage their pain. The idea is not that pain in the absence of tissue damage is all in your head but rather that all pain is in the head. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps patients understand that pain is a stressor and like other stressors, it is something they can be adapt to and cope with.

Interventions may include relaxation training, scheduling pleasant activities, cognitive restructuring, and guided exercise all in the context of an empathic and validating relationship with the therapist. These interventions have the potential to relieve pain intensity, improve the quality of life, and improve physical and emotional function.

Therapy helps the patient see that emotional and psychological factors influence perception of pain and behaviors that are associated with having pain. Therapy in place cognitive and behavioral strategies help patients to cope more successfully. CBT and other alternative approaches for chronic pain. Studies suggest that CBT has a top-down effect on pain control and perception of painful stimuli.

It can also normalize reductions in the brain's gray matter volume, which are thought to result from the effects of chronic stress. Cognitive behavioral therapy is moderately effective in reducing pain scores, while avoiding or reducing the opioid risks of overuse, addiction, overdose, and death. It can be used as a standalone treatment; in combination with other treatments, including effective non-opioid medications; or as part of efforts to reduce the opioid doses required to control chronic pain.

CBT and other nondrug treatments are underused due to unfamiliarity, time pressure, patient demands, ease of prescribing medications, and low reimbursement rates. There is a need for a paradigm shift from a biomedical to a biopsychosocial model for effective pain treatment and prevention of opioid use disorder.
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Stress affects psychological response to danger

Being under stress makes us worse at detecting new dangers, according to a new study. Stress can make our thinking and responses less flexible, so we are slower to learn new dangers.

Researchers taught their subjects cues for danger, then put half of that group under stress. The cues for danger and for safety were then switched, and the study found that those exposed to stress adapted to the new cues more slowly than their peers.

Fight or flight responses to stressors are meant to help us take action when we're in danger. When we are already under stress, we are slower to learn that something that once was safe is now a danger.

In the first round of the test, none of the subjects were under stress, and they were all shown a series of images. Half of those images predicted a small electrical shock, while half did not.
After half of the subjects had been subjected to stress, everyone watched the images again, but this time the dangerous and safe cues were switched.

The subjects that had been put under stress - by holding one arm in a tub of ice water before doing the danger activity again - were even slower to learn that something that had been safe was now dangerous than they were to learn the reverse. It took the stressed subjects an average of six extra tries to catch up to the physiological responses of their unstressed peers.
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