Posts Tagged stress
Achieve New Year’s resolution to reduce stress at your work-desk
With the page turned over to 2020, office-workers worldwide must bear down again and do even better than ever before. If you did really well in last year, that just raises expectations for a similar improvement over the next 12 months. Naturally stress levels rise and performance drops off into a downward spiral. But, no worries, a solution is at hand: Simply pick up a small plant, preferably fool-proof such as these fine fifteen recommended by House Beautiful. Then, per a study by Japanese scientists*, whenever you feel worn down, take a 3 minute break to gaze at your plant and, when needed, care for it. Based on the results from experiments on over 60 participants, you will become more relaxed (as measured by pulse rate) and relieved of anxiety (based on scoring).
“Nature can serve as an antidote to over-stimulation or “attention fatigue,” as well as boost cognitive performance.”
Cory Steig, Health and Wellness Reporter, Make It, CNBC, 3/3/20, “This 3-minute, $3 habit could lower your stress and anxiety at work”.
It works for me. In any case, happy New Year! Don’t let the stress get to you.
* Toyoda, et al, “Potential of a Small Indoor Plant on the Desk for Reducing Office Workers’ Stress”, 12/19/19, HortTechnology.
Small sample sizes produce yawning results from sleep studies
Posted by mark in Basic stats & math, design of experiments on July 15, 2009
“Too little attention has been paid to the statistical challenges in estimating small effects.”
— Andrew Gelman and David Weakliem, “Of Beauty, Sex and Power,” American Scientist, Volume 97, July-August 2009 .
In last week’s “In the Lab” column of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)*, Sarah Rubinstein reported an intriguing study by the “light and health” program of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). The director, Mariana Figueiro, is trying to establish a lighting scheme for older people that will facilitate their natural rhythms of wakefulness and sleep. In one 2002 experiment (according to WSJ), Dr. Figueiro subjected four Alzheimer patients to two hours of blue, red or no light-emitting diodes (LEDs). After then putting the individuals to bed, their nurses made observations every two hours and found that the “blue-light special” out-did the red by 66% versus 54% on how often they caught patients napping.
Over the years we’ve accumulated many electrical devices in our bedroom – television, cable box, clocks, smoke and carbon monoxide monitors, etc., which all feature red lights. They don’t bother me, but they keep my wife awake. So it would be interesting, I think, if blues would promote snooze. Unfortunately the WSJ report does not provide confidence intervals on the two percentages – nor do they detail the sample size so one could determine statistical significance on the difference of 0.12 (0.66 minus 0.54). (I assume that each of the 4 subjects were repeatedly tested some number of times.) According to this simple calculator posted by the Southwest Oncology Group (a national clinical research group), it would take a sample size of 554 to provide 80% power for achieving statistical significance at 0.05 for this difference!
So, although whether blue light really does facilitate sleep remains questionable, I am comforted by the testimonial of one of the study participants (a 100 years old!) – “It’s a beautiful light,” she says.
PS. Fyi, for more sophisticated multifactor experimentation (such as for screening studies), Stat-Ease posted a power calculator for binomial responses and provided explanation in its June 2009 Stat-Teaser newsletter .
* “Seeking a Light Approach to Elderly Sleep Troubles,” p. D2, 7/7/09
Stress as factor for cardiac arrest felled along with author who did not sweat the small stuff?
I’m a hard-working guy who suffered a heart attack at age 51 despite not smoking, and staying in shape via regular exercise. Although it was hard to overlook the genetic factor of my younger brother preceding me with his own myocardial infarction (as the cardiologists refer to it), many acquaintances figured that both of us probably created our own problem by being too stressed. After reading this morning that Richard Carlson, author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, passed away on Wednesday due to cardiac arrest, I feel less sure than ever that stress creates heart problems. Ironically at this time just before Christmas, Carlson, only 45 years of age, died en route to an a New York city promotional appearance for his new book Don’t Get Scrooged: How to Thrive in a World Full of Obnoxious, Incompetent, Arrogant and Downright Mean-Spirited People.
The American Heat Association in their detailing of Risk Factors and Coronary Heart Disease puts stress near the bottom of the list and speculates that people suffering from this may overeat, start smoking or smoke more than they otherwise would — all more likely to create problems than stress itself. The most stress that I ever experienced was driving into Manhattan for a Broadway play and getting stuck in a traffic jam entering the Lincoln Tunnel. I made the mistake of being ‘Minnesota nice’ by letting someone wedge into line ahead of me. This precipitated widespread honking of horns from irate New Yorkers waiting impatiently all around me. A cursory internet search on stress studies dredged up Exposure to New York City as a Risk Factor for Heart Attack Mortality. It seems that I cannot yet rest my case against stress being a factor for causing heart problems, especially since Carlson was heading for New York when he suffered his cardiac arrest. 🙁