Live Love and Let Go Archives - James K. Abshire, M.D.

Combating Stress: You Have Power!

September 2, 2016 by Dr. James Abshire Leave a Comment

“Calling Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard”

The hospital loudspeaker blared away while the three doctors ran through the hospital with patient’s lives on the line. Mayhem everywhere. Fortunately, it was just a Three Stooges movie short. Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk.

But I remember experiencing those types of days in real life (although with slightly less pies flying through the air). Working for 20-plus hours and then just getting to sleep right before being called for a code blue and have to run straight from bed to a patient’s room to perform CPR with a life on the line. Trying to save patients who are septic, throwing up blood, having a heart attack, a stroke, or pneumonia, and all of that on the same day (I really hate Mondays).

Stress

August 6, 2016 by Dr. James Abshire Leave a Comment

Today you decided to take a nice walk in the forest after you got home from work. It’s a good way to unwind after a long day. As you walk down the trail, enjoying the beauty around you, you hear some strange rattling in the nearby bushes. You step closer to see what’s causing it, and suddenly realize it’s a mama grizzly and her cub. She lets out a loud roar. Before you have time to even think, you’re darting 20 feet in the opposite direction. This is the most stress you’ve ever felt in your life. But what is stress?

Willpower

July 21, 2016 by Dr. James Abshire 1 Comment

“Stay!” blog 14 aussie

Cassie gazed up at me with her one blue and one brown eye. She stared back down at the piece of cheese.

“Stay!”

Cassie looked back up at me and wagged her tail. She had played this game once before and knew she could out-wait me. She also knows that the cuter and sadder she looks, the sooner that I’ll give in and give her the ‘go ahead’. Cassie is perhaps the smartest dog I’ve ever seen. In fact, I think the only thing that holds her back is the lack of opposable thumbs (and her leash).

The Unlucky One (Or life’s not fair)

July 8, 2016 by Dr. James Abshire 3 Comments

“It’s not fair.”

“I’m really unlucky.”

“If it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.”

“I didn’t deserve this.”

“Why is all this happening to me?”

“There must not be a God or else this wouldn’t have happened.”

We’ve all had these types of thoughts when bad things happen. What are we to make of this and how do we deal with it? How could a benevolent God allow bad things to happen?

Perhaps the answer lies in comparing our (i.e. humanities) viewpoint of life events with God’s perspective. Let’s start with some examples in Biblical history of people’s response when good things have happened to them:

Faith and Health

April 2, 2016 by Dr. James Abshire Leave a Comment

In the last blog, we looked at the benefits of faith on physical health. Now I’d like to turn to the interaction of faith and mental health.

A number of studies have looked at the benefits of faith on mental health. These studies are generally examining people who attend church on a fairly regular and weekly basis. A summary of these mental health benefits is listed below: faith 11

* Better social support1

* Better insight to medical condition and more compliant with medication2

* Lower rates of suicide3

* Improved coping skills4

* Protection against depression5

Faith – Love – Health

March 24, 2016 by Dr. James Abshire Leave a Comment

There Are Three important aspects of life that we tend to seek and develop separately. However, they are synergistically linked – improvements in one area can help us in the other areas as well.

The next several blogs will explore faith, love, and health and their interrelationships.

Faith has benefits on both our physical and mental health. Let’s start with some of the physical benefits:

Increased life expectancy by up to 2-8 years ¹
Reduced incidence of meningitis²
Reduced alcohol abuse³
Reduced drug abuse⁴
Involvement in religion (prayer and attending church) lowers blood pressure⁵

Welcome to the Live, Love and Let Go Website and Blog!

February 29, 2016 by Dr. James Abshire Leave a Comment

It’s certainly a crazy world we live in, with tremendous changes in the last half century.

There are:

· Strange political characters on both the national and international stages

· Threats of global terrorism and potential chemical, biological and nuclear warfare

· Financial pressures

· Pressure to keep up with rapidly advancing technology

· Changes in social norms

The way we think, talk and act towards each other changed dramatically over the years. Case in point: Back at the beginning of the American Civil War, prisoners were handled by a ‘parole’ system. Prisoners were allowed to go back to their own side – they just had to promise not to go back to fight against their captors.