Stress

Several Interesting Stress Quiz

http://www.rcre.rutgers.edu/development/stressquiz/
http://www.arc.sbc.edu/stressquiz.html
http://www.stress-management.net/stress-test.htm
http://chealth.canoe.ca/health_tools.asp?channel_id=159&relation_id=2347&quiz=y&t=11&text_id=1859
(picture test)http://www.personalityquiz.net/test/stress-pictures.htm
(bigger picture)http://www.marshu.com/collection-self-test-stress.php

Resources about Stress
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15772952/
http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/work/
http://health.yahoo.com/topic/stress
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/stresshuman/index.html http://www.stressbusting.co.uk/
http://search.businessweek.com/Search?searchTerm=stress

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from wikipedia...

Definition

Stress can be defined as the sum of physical and mental responses to an unacceptable disparity between real or imagined personal experience and personal expectations. By this definition, stress is a response which includes both physical and mental components.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_%28psychology%29


Common Factors of Stress
Below is a non-exhaustive list of common stressors in people's lives:
-Bright light
-Elevated sound levels
-Events: births, deaths, rape, war, reunions, weddings, divorce, moving, chronic illness, loss of role, identity, meaning.
-Responsibilities: Unpaid bills, lack of money
-Work/study: exams, rush hour traffic, project deadlines
-Personal relationships: conflict, deception, bullying
-Lifestyle, (un-healthy eating, smoking, heavy drinking, not getting enough sleep, etc.)
-Exposure to stress early on in life can permanently enhance the stress response (ie: abused children)
-Age

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_%28psychology%29


Early Study

Stress was traditionally conceptualized to be a result of external insults beyond the control of those experiencing the stress. More recently, however, it has been argued that external circumstances do not have any intrinsic capacity to produce stress, but instead their effect is mediated by the individual's perceptions, capacities, and understanding.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_management


Transactional Model

This model proposes that helping stressed individuals change their perceptions of stressors, and providing them with strategies which help them cope with stressors and feel confident in their ability to do so, will reduce their stress.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_management


The Health Realization/Innate Health Model

This model proposes that helping stressed individuals understand the nature of thought--especially providing them with the ability to recognize when they are in the grip of insecure thinking, disengage from it, and access their natural positive feelings--will reduce their stress.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_management


Need of Stress Management

It is now an accepted fact in the medical community; according to recent research, that stress is one of the major causes of all illnesses. Stress can cause migraines, stroke, eczema, a weak immune system, and many other diseases. Stress is also known to cause medical complications during pregnancy for both the mother and the child. Hence, there is a growing need for stress management.


Techniques of Stress Help

-self-understanding (e.g. self-identification as a Type A or as a Type B personality)
-cognitive therapy
-self-management (e.g. becoming better-organized)
-conflict resolution
-positive attitude
-self-talk
-autogenic training
-breathing
-progressive relaxation
-masturbation
-meditation
-hypnosis
-exercise
-diet
-rest
-stress balls
-therapeutic massage
-laughter

Some techniques of time management may help a person to control stress. For example:
-becoming more organized and reducing the generation of clutter
-setting priorities can help reduce anxiety
-using a "to do" list of tasks that a person needs to complete can give a person a sense of control and accomplishment
-Effective stress management involves learning to set limits and to say "No" to some demands that others make.


Digital Thermometers

Since stress activates the body's defense mechanism, blood is frequently drawn away from the extremities and to the torso when a stress attack occurs. Digital thermometers (digital because they measure finger temperature) can be used to detect a person's level of stress. Note that the actual temperature is not the most important characteristic, but rather the change in temperature. Using this knowledge has proven useful in designing treatment for prevention and control of stress attacks. This technique was pioneered by Dr. Claudio Zapata.


See Also

-Anger management
-Biofeedback
-Cognitive Therapy
-How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
-Hypertension
-Massage
-Psychological resilience
-Relaxation technique
-T'ai Chi Ch'uan
-Time Management
-Yoga
-Holiday stress
-Health Realization


Other Resources
http://chealth.canoe.ca/
-comprehansive information about health(including mental and senior health)

My Thoughts

The future technology or application should not and will not be just about effiency, it will be and should be about high quality of life, healthiness and individual's sustainability.

Ideas 2

Special Groups:

• Children
• Elderly
• Office worker
• Poor people
• Disabled

Problems within each group:

Elderly:
need emergency assistance
difficulty with technology
lack of being cared
movement difficulty
sleep problems (more than 2/3)

characteristic:
usually have pet
watch TV a lot

reference:
http://seniorliving.about.com/od/lifetransitionsaging/a/seniorpop.htm


Office worker:
lack of physical exercises
stress
lack of communication with family members

Children:


Disabled:


Poor people:



Noticeable, elderly is a increasingly huge group, their problems, needs, voices is becoming more important, which are often ignored by mainstream society, whose main productive part is young people. There is a big barrier between young people and elderly. They know and cares less about technology, they use internet a little, so it seems they speak different language.

also other groups are all connected to this group. for example, how to enable children and elderly communicate more, how to let office worker care more about their parents, how to improve poor elderly receive better health care. many elderly have some kind of disability.

There is a lot of things to do for elderly group.

Ideas

1. inconsistency between technology and health
people in technology era become slaves of technology?
technology are good at all?
are we doing harm to our health?
this life style is not healthy and sustainable
what's the healthy way to live in technology era
is current working condition satisfying?
radiation, physical gesture, no exercise and movement, less personal communication
what the children will be who are born in technology era?
to be healthy is a human right
should we use computer for everything?

2. stress
where is the stress coming from for us living in technology era
how to reduce these stress
multi-tasking issue

3. ecourage people to go outside, to move, to go into nature
game?
get away from computer and television

4. special goup - computer worker
have to work in front of computer for hours everyday
what's their health condition, physically and mentally?
what's their need?
what's their impact to their next generation?
are they satisfied with their current situation, working, living?
do they want to change?
what's the big obstacle for them?


5. bad information
so much information in information era, do harm to people's health indirectly, decrease efficiency
how can we clear, filter information, get rid of useless information, suggest good information

#2 meeting

public health
life style
help doctor make decisions
social network
stress
stress caused by technology - for example sitting in front of computer all day
some technology get people get out of room
area of motivation - how to motivate people
constant multi-tasking issue
soldiers - special group
workers - special group
special needs of some special family and children - huge need
immigration group
how to track, deliver drugs
prevention for effects of soldiers before they go
http://www.thetruth.com/











*talk to real people, to get a real sense of what they need

Save print paper

For first class, I printed out some webpages i found about health. I'll read them carefully later, but before that I found a problem. I have 18 articles to print, well...it's not too many, but finally I got 52 pages! Almost as 3 times as I really need! That means if we have good ways to save or re-use these paper, the total amount can be reduced by 2 or 3 times. The paper I printed out are filled full of advertisement, pictures and text infomation that I don't need, even though on the pages where are the articles I need. It's really a HUGE waste! And these prints I won't keep long, probably 1 or 2 days at most. I really don't want to waste these many, but people have to print. This makes me think about that is there a way we can reduce wasting paper?

I come up with two ideas. One is in practice, the other one is relying on technology.

The fist one is to provide people a way and convenience to reduce wasting paper. I think one of the ways is to collect the used paper somehow, for example provide a paper recycle bin near printer, someone put those paper into printer in some certain time, for using the other side of paper, these paper are mostly people mistake printing or some blank pages that printer gives out. In some other ocassions, people have to take their prints to somewhere else, like me, take some webpages to class for discusstion. But most of time, after people use these paper somewhere or for some time, they won't keep them. So it's very likely for people just leave them somewhere or throw them into the trash bin. I think most people want to contribute for reducing waste, they just need some convenience to do this. So we can provide a kind of convenience for them, to make collecting these paper more easily.

My second idea is adding a selection printing feature to browser. People can select an area on webpage to print. In this way, we only need to print the information we need, and save a lot of paper.

Healthier to use technology

This semester I will be involved in a lot of health, environment problem discussion. The two representitive classes are Design Expo and Sustainable Practices. So leave technics aside for a while, just start to think about ourselves, our environment and their relations.

I started my first touch on health issue from Google News. There is a specific topic of Health on Google News, and there are many different countries version of Google News, so it's really a good resource that can get a big picture of this issue around the world in a short time.

I looked through Google News of these regions: China, HongKong, Taiwan, Japan, US, UK, Canada, South Africa, Austrilia. I found something interesting.

The first interested me is that there is no the topic of Health in Asian versions (based on China, HongKong, Taiwan, Japan) of Google News. I didn't aware that there is a difference between different countries' Google News. I think this slight difference may suggest that developing countries don't care about health enough, they give their most interests on economy, technology and some others. I further went to some Chinese language big portal websites, and found most content under their health topic are daily health care and life tips, while in developed countries are health and medicine studies.

Further I found topics about health mainly fall into three catageries: hard-to-solve diseases (such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, bird flu, Alzheimer's), health care policy, smoking and a new interesting issue-mobile phone's radiation.

I'm pretty much interested in the problem of mobile phone's or new technology device's radiation. Researchers say there is no solid proofs that long-term use of mobile phone will cause brain cancer, but the data revealed a hint.

New technology are bringing people so much more benefits than ever, but we can't overlook its harmness and risk. People should definitely use and advance new technology, but they also should use it in a healthy way. When Apple will launch their iGreenPhone?

some links about health:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/health/nutrition/16brody.html?_r=1&ref=fitnessandnutrition&oref=slogin
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6358458,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1994182,00.html
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Alberta/2007/01/20/3413039-sun.html
http://allafrica.com/stories/200701181000.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6280055.stm
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4136,121679,00.html
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=61210
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2556768,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6281695.stm
http://www.slipperybrick.com/2007/01/is-your-cell-phone-giving-you-cancer/
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,21092445-5003419,00.html
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2007-01-20T045027Z_01_MCC017402_RTRIDST_0_HEALTH-HIV-TESTING-DC.XML&WTmodLoc=SciHealth-C4-Health-2
http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2007/01/21/hscout601192.html
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23382547-details/Tories+reveal+plans+to+scrap+health+targets/article.do
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-01-21T151327Z_01_L21660814_RTRUKOC_0_UK-BRITAIN-HEALTH.xml
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=61214
http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2007/01/18/hscout601104.html

#1 assignment (before class)

Nancy's before-class assignment letter:

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Dear MS Design Expo Class....
Our first class will be on Monday Jan 22...

I think most of you know that the topic for the Design Expo this year is 'Health and Wellness', an important topic, and a very broad one, and we only have 12 weeks. So for the first class, here is what I would like you to read, bring and be prepared for:

1) I want you to spend the next ten days keeping your eyes and ears peeled on this topic...flip through the newspapers and magazines, ( general interest and health), look at the news, listen to conversations at home, on talk radio. Bring in clippings of articles you see about health and wellness, book reviews,etc.. You will be surprised about how much is in the air---inhale as much as you can! Talk to your parents, grandparents, doctors...what are the big issues? challenges? We will spend a good deal of the first class putting a lot of ideas on the board...to see if we sketch out the territory. Don't think about what you might make or technology...we just want to be able to describe the space, as a group. Also, don't get hung up on how loose this description is. Have fun, be aware, raise your consciousness, begin to see what interests you. That's the purpose.

2) to get a sense of global priorities, check out these websites:
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/who/index.htm
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/GlobalHealth/BreakthroughScience/GrandChallenges/Announcements/Announce-050627.htm
3) Come prepared to introduce yourself to me and to the class with a 2 minute presentation that includes: your name and background,why you came to ITP, what you think your strengths are on a team, what skills you would like to develop, some thing about you.... a passion (now or as a kid, a talent, a fear???.... that will surprise people. Practice the presentation. You will stand and give it. If you want to use some tech (e.e power point), bring a thumbstick and load it up before class. I willI will cut you off at 2 minutes.
And here is the description of the Design Expo from MS


also check this out:

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/2007/top10_2006.htm


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