Prayers 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 Avoidance

August 22, 2016 by Dr. James Abshire Leave a Comment

Life is inherently stressful. But is there anything we can do to reduce stress? We cannot completely eliminate stress, but we can reduce it as well as improve our ability to handle whatever stress that we do have.

Careful planning can reduce potential stressful experiences. Consider the example in the last blog of being chased by a bear. This stress could be avoided by:

* Don’t go where bears hang out. Listen to your mom.

* If you are silly enough to go where the bears are, then lock up all your food so as not to attract them. Either that, or cook with lots of habaneros.

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?

Great + Attitude = Gratitude

June 6, 2016 by Dr. James Abshire 2 Comments

Gratitude can be really painful. Kind of like Rocky Balboa taking a punch. It may hurt a lot in the short run, but it will make you strong enough to win by the next fight.

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.