How you and Your Rotary Club Can Use Helpguide

Rotary shares, this year’s theme of Rotary International, is embraced by the Helpguide program of the Rotary Club of Santa Monica. Our mission is to be an empowering non-commercial resource helping readers and their families understand, prevent and resolve mental and physical health challenges. Recognized experts contribute and review articles on a variety of topics from insomnia to stress reduction to healthy aging and depression, and much more.

Fellow Rotarians, here is where you and your club come in:

Use Helpguide to help yourself and your family. Email a link to articles you like to your friends. Does your club have a website? We would especially appreciate a link to the Helpguide homepage. See LINK TO US for graphics you download use or create your own link.

Sign up for Helpguide's email newsletter to keep abreast of news and new articles.

Read the first 3 installments of "Rotary Health Moments," a series of mini-articles created specifically for the members of the International Fellowship of Rotarian Editors and Publishers to use in their bulletins and websites. The fellowship welcomes your membership. Also, if your club (or other community service organization) would like to receive and use articles from this series, please contact moments@helpguide.org

Rotary Health Moments

Coping with Stress

We live in a busy world. With the increasing demands of home and work life, many people are under so much stress that their physical and emotional health suffers. With some simple coping techniques, by your nervous system back into balance.

Stress management techniques give you a sense of calm and control. There are no "one size fits all" solutions. Everyone is unique, thus experiment with a variety of approaches to learn what works best for you.

Here are some coping tips:

1. Have realistic expectations: Know your limits. Whether personally or professionally, be realistic about how much you can do.
2. Reframe problems: See obstacles as opportunities. As a result of positive thinking, you will be able to handle whatever is causing your stress. Refute negative thoughts and try to see the glass as half full.
3. Maintain your sense of humor: This includes the ability to laugh at yourself. Watch a funny movie: the sillier the plot the better.
4. Express your feelings instead of bottling them up: In order to live a less stressful life, learn to calm your emotions.
5. Don't try to control events or other people: Many circumstances in life are beyond your control, particularly the behavior of others.
6. Ask yourself "Is this my problem?" If it isn't, leave it alone.

Tips for a Good Night's Sleep

In the United States, over 100 million people experience some sort of tossing and turning though the night making insomnia a national health concern.

Luckily, implementing simple lifestyle changes and improving behaviors that contribute to nighttime restlessness can help people with mild to moderate insomnia find the restful slumber they so desperately need.

Tips for getting a better, healthier sleep include:

1. Have healthy daytime habits: Avoid napping, limit caffeine, alcohol, and other stimulants, and exercise early in the day rather than the evening.
2. Improve your sleeping environment: Make sure your bed is large and comfortable; designate the bedroom as a relaxation-only zone (no working or paying bills in bed); and keep the bedroom cool and quiet.
3. Create pre-sleep rituals: Listening to soft music or drinking a cup of tea every night can “cue” your body that its time to sleep.
4. Eat right to sleep tight: While consuming heavy meals too close to can cause indigestion, eating certain bedtime snacks can actually help.
5. Get back to sleep quicker by getting out of bed: If you do wake up during the night, don’t lie in bed and stress about your lack of sleep. Leave the room and do something relaxing until you start feeling sleepy again.

Improving your Memory

As Barbara Streisand put it, most memories are misty and water-colored. But is there a way to make our memories clear and rich as an oil painting? Just like muscular strength, your ability to remember increases when you exercise your memory and nurture it with a good diet and other healthy habits.

From practicing mnemonics to increasing B-vitamins in your diet, there are concrete things you can do to help your mind retain information, improving both short- and long-term memory.

Mnemonic devices that can help improve your memory abilities:

1. Visual images: a microphone to remember the name “Mike,” a rose for “Rosie.” Use positive, pleasant images, because the brain often blocks out unpleasant ones, and make them vivid, colorful, and three-dimensional — they’ll be easier to remember.
2. Rhymes and alliteration: remember learning “30 days hath September, April, June, and November”? A hefty guy named Robert can be remembered as “Big Bob” and a smiley co-worker as “Perky Pat” (though it might be best to keep such names to yourself)
3. “Chunking” information: Arrange a long list in smaller units or categories that are easier to remember. If you can reel off your Social Security number without looking at it, that’s probably because it’s arranged in groups of 3, 2, and 4 digits, not a string of 9.
4. “Method of loci”: This is an ancient and effective way of remembering a lot of material, such as a speech. You associate each part of what you have to remember with a landmark in a route you know well, such as your commute to work.