RECOVER: Feb 2012

FOUND IN (SOICAL MEDIA) SPACE

The "found in (social media) space" article is a new feature in 2012.  We task a member of the geekdom on the task of paying attention to the social-space and stringing together, in some fashion, some of the themes being bantered-about "out there in space" as they relate to the elements.  Sometimes these will just be lists of interesting posts, sometimes there'll be some original content.....follow along and find out for yourself. 


This month Mike Eisenhart (chief geek?) reports on RECOVER.  You can follow Mike on twitter @mikeeisenhart or subscribe to his weekly blog "A Red-iculous Effort" posted on Sundays.




"Stress is when you wake-up screaming and realize you haven't fallen asleep yet" - Author Unknown

Picture from www.whatisneuroplasticity.com interesting stuff

Hopefully, it's not that bad.....but did you ever stop and think about how much information we're attempting to process everyday?  Literally trillions and trillions of bits of information slamming into our senses every minute of every day as we, equipped with only a few pounds of gray matter, try desperately to interpret, make sense and store it all.  This is no easy task considering (as several sources state) our eyes alone deliver around 11 billion bits of information per second, and that's only roughly one third of the +/- 30 billion per second we're "able" to handle.  


So with that much capacity to absorb (and act on at least in some capacity) information, why do we often feel overwhelmed with the world around us?


This, question, although critical to our health and ability to excel, doesn't come with a simple answer. Truly, the topic of stress and overwhelm is a big one with deep roots.....I recently even found myself blogging about the subject and my blog is typically about endurance training.....so to say it touches most (if not all) aspects of our lives could be an understatement.  


The good news is, there is some solid research on the subject, it's not all bad, we've got more storage capacity than we know how to count, there are techniques that work, there may be a good side, if we can control it we have a better chance at maintaining our weight, friends and co-workers can make it better and that's likely only the beginning.


Learn more with the links and tweets below:


Links & Stories

• Storage Capacity of the Mind? This article from Scientific American (May 2010) suggests an accurate estimate is somewhere around a million GIGAbytes (makes that iPod storage capacity seem a little paltry no?).

• Awareness & Attention: The ability to attend to certain things and dismiss others, to maintain focus in a hectic world just keeps coming up. "Mindfulness techniques" continue to be in the limelight and are even being used to combat Adult ADHD at UCLA in March 2012 and pain in THIS ARTICLE

• Control: Some research says that it's less about having stress than it is about NOT having control over the stressors.  The famous Whitehall Study showed that people in the lowest occupational rank had as much as a 4x greater risk than those subjects in the highest tier.  READ THIS article from Wired Magazine (8/2011) to learn more about this topic and why your mean co-workers might be killing you (sort of sounds like a news tease doesn't it?) - interesting though.

Tweets

• Brainworks Rehab @BrainworksRehab Good Stress vs. Bad #Stress: How Stress can Impair or Improve Performance ow.ly/8UD1P 

• Harvard Research @HarvardResearch RT @HarvardHealth: Stress and overeating: Why people crave comfort food - from the Feb. Harvard Mental Health Letter hvrd.me/zuC1La 

• PsychCentral @PsychCentral News: Co-Worker Support Reduces Workplace Stress, Ups Productivity psych.ly/zDGUUN 

• NYTimes Dining&Wine @nytdining Mindful Eating as Food for Thought nyti.ms/xPyumU

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