Curl your toes… to relax while trading

Happy_feet

Happy feet

…yes, you’ve got to curl back your toes to relax.

Stress is inextricably intertwined with trading.

Worth a pretty coin: assess your emotions while trading; then, jot down what would happen to your account if you trade a fade of your emotions…

But, that’s not what I wanted to comment today. Lately, I’ve been wakening up with swollen hands; as a matter of fact, the swelling is not subsiding during the day.

As you may well know, trading is quite stressful; even when holding a winning position… Waiting to pull the trigger, risking all those G’s, cutting your losses short, and the rest…

I googled this great article from John Carpi at Psychology Today: Stress, it’s worse than you think.

As John explains, stress can be quite destructive to your mind and body; a slow killer…

So, according to Dr. Levine, stress alters our brain permanently…

"Years of research has told us that people do become sensitized to stress and that this sensitization actually alters physical patterns in the brain," says Seymour Levine, Ph.D., of the University of Delaware. "That means that once sensitized, the body just does not respond to stress the same way in the future. We may produce too many excitatory chemicals or too few calming ones; either way we are responding inappropriately."

And depending on our previous exposure to stress, specially during childhood, we cope better or fail to endure stress…

It is the stew of chemicals released by such provocations that ultimately explains the noose stress ties between mind and body. "This new paradigm of stress demonstrates that there is a link between psychological events and physical eruptions, between mind and body," King says. "The psychological events that are most deleterious probably occur during infancy and childhood—an unstable home environment, living with an alcoholic parent, or any other number of extended crises." The new paradigm also firmly ties everyday psychological stress to such suspect complaints as ulcers, headaches, and fatigue.

…the body is slowly killing itself!

By responding to the stress of everyday life with the same surge of biochemicals released during  major threats, the body is slowly killing itself. The biochemical onslaught chips away at the immune system, opening the way to cancer infection, and disease. Hormones unleashed by stress eat at the digestive tract and lungs promoting ulcers and asthma. Or they may weaken the heart, leading to strokes and heart  disease. "Chronic stress is like slow poison, King observes. "It is a fact of modern life that  even people who are not sensitized to stress are  adversely affected by everything that can go  wrong in the day.

A torrent of studies catalogue how even a little stress can have wide-ranging effects on the body. Researchers have found that:

  • Epinephrine, released by the adrenal glands in response to stress, instigates potentially damaging changes in blood cells. Epinephrine triggers blood platelets, the cells responsible for repairing blood vessels, to secrete large quantities of a substance called ATP. In large amounts, ATP can trigger a heart attack or stroke by causing blood vessels to rapidly narrow, thus cutting off blood flow, says Thomas Pickering, M.D., a cardiologist at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.
  • Other substances released in the stress response impair the body’s ability to fight infections. In one study, researchers tracked the neurohormones of parachute jumpers. They found an 84 percent surge in nerve growth factor (NGF) among young Italian soldiers attempting their first jump, compared with nonjumpers. Up to six hours after they hit ground, the jumpers’ NGF levels were 107 percent higher than in nonjumping soldiers. Released by the pituitary gland as part of the stress response, NGF is attracted like a magnet to disease-fighting cells, where it hinders their ability to ward off infections. An immune system thus suppressed can raise susceptibility to colds—or raise the risk of cancer.
  • Cortisol activation can similarly damage the immune system. Sheldon Cohen, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, gave 400 people a questionnaire designed to quantify the amount of stress they were under. He then exposed them to nose drops containing cold viruses. About 90 percent of the stressed subjects (versus 74 percent of those not under stress) caught a cold. He found they had elevated levels of corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF). "We know that CRF interferes with the immune system," Cohen says. "That is likely the physical explanation why people under stress are more likely to catch a cold."
  • Stress hormones are also implicated in rheumatoid arthritis. The hormone prolactin, released by the pituitary gland in response to stress, triggers cells that cause swelling in joints. In a study of 100 people with rheumatoid arthritis, Kathleen S. Matt, Ph.D., and colleagues at Arizona State University found that levels of prolactin were twice as high among those reporting high degrees of interpersonal stress than among those not stressed. Other studies have shown that prolactin migrates to joints, where it initiates a cascade of events leading to swelling, pain, tenderness. "This is clearly what people mean when they say stress is worsening their arthritis," Matt says. "Here we have the hormone released during stress implicated in the very thing that causes arthritis pain, swollen joints."
  • After being released by the pituitary gland, the stress hormone ACTH can impede production of the body’s natural pain relievers, endorphins, leading to a general feeling of discomfort and heightened pain after injury. High levels of ACTH also trigger excess serotonin, now linked to bursts of violent behavior.

…and I sure didn’t like these findings:

Lawrence Brass, M.D., associate professor of neurology at Yale Medical School, found that severe stress is one of the most potent risk factors for stroke more so than high blood pressure—even 50 years after the initial trauma. Brass studied 556 veterans of World War II and found that the rate of stroke among those who had been prisoners of war was eight times higher than among those veterans who had not been captured.

The findings at first confused Brass. After all, the stress hormones that cause heart disease and stroke are elevated only for a few hours after a stressful event. "I began to realize we would have to take our understanding of stress farther when I began to see that in some people stress can cause disease years after the initial event," he says. He concluded that the immediate effect of the war trauma on the stress response system had to have been permanent. "The stress of being a POW was so severe it changed the way these folks responded to stress in the future—it sensitized them."

Fortunately, there are plenty of useful tricks to relax:

Five—Count ‘Em, Five—Trick
Since you can never have too many tricks in your little bag, here are some "proven stress-busters" from Paul Rosch, M.D., president of the American Institute of Stress:

  1. Curl your toes against the soles of your feet as hard as you can for 15 seconds, then relax them. Progressively tense and relax the muscles in your legs, stomach, back, shoulders, neck.
  2. Visualize lying on a beach, listening to waves coming in and feeling the warm sun and gentle breezes on your back. Or, if you prefer, imagine an erotic fantasy or picture yourself in whatever situation makes you happiest.
  3. Set aside 20 to 30 minutes a day to do anything you want—even nothing.
  4. Take a brisk walk.
  5. Keep a music player handy and loaded with relaxing, enjoyable music.

Make sure to check out all the relaxation methods here.

Take it easy guys… and take a good deep breath.