John Aaron Wellness

Three years ago, the American Psychological Association (APA) conducted a survey about stress, and found that 1/3 of all Americans reported feeling "extreme" levels of stress, with 1/5 of Americans experiencing this stress 15 days or more a month. As of 2010, more than 75% of Americans are suffering with some form of stress-related condition, which may manifest as anything from slowly increasing blood pressure, or irrational emotional agitation to a full blown stress attack that makes life unbearable. Add to this the fact that 121 million people worldwide suffer from depression, and that anxiety frequently co-occurs with both stress and depression, and the epidemic of stress in America becomes clear. Many Houston-area doctors and psychiatrists recommend courses of drug treatments or cognitive therapy to cope with these stress or anxiety attacks, and in some cases, these can be beneficial tools for healthy living. From a whole-health wellness perspective, however, there a numb...

Part of whole-life wellness, weight loss, and fitness is having the energy to accomplish your goals, and a large part of this energy comes from food. Unfortunately, Americans all over the country, and in and around Houston (twice known as the "Fattest City in America," by Men's Health Magazine), are caught in the trap of easy-to-eat, but hard-to-digest foods. The culprits: fast foods and soft drinks that are high calorie, instant-energy boosters. Such foods can lead to long-term problems like weight gain, and short-term effects like bloating and lethargy after the initial energy high wears off. In order to strike a balance between nutrition and energy, fresh food in the form of vegetables, fruit, and locally produced meat products can be a viable choice. According to a study conducted by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, a lack of fresh food available in a neighborhood hurts the health of residents. This 2010 study dealt with 73,000 residents in 60 communitie...