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Ask about CT angiography. If you have risk factors for heart disease (high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, family history, or smoking), ask your doctor whether a coronary CT angiography might be appropriate. It’s the imaging technique used in this study and can detect plaque before it causes symptoms.
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Stress and anxiety are becoming increasingly common among today’s dogs and cats. In fact, canine and feline stress is a growing concern for pet parents, with one pet insurance provider reporting a 93% increase in anxiety-related claims between 2019 and 2025. Left unaddressed, chronic stress is linked to behavioral challenges and long-term health issues, including digestive disorders, hormone imbalances, weakened immune function, and skin and coat issues. While addressing stress and anxiety often requires a multifaceted approach, there are effective adaptogens for pet stress, and ashwagandha—specifically KSM-66 Ashwagandha—consistently ranks as one of the safest, most popular, and most effective.
Adaptogens are herbs that help the body adapt to physical, mental, and emotional stress. Rather than sedating or overstimulating the system, the way pharmaceutical drugs can, they work by supporting the body’s natural state of balance, or homeostasis. Stress can have many sources for dogs and cats, including environmental changes, separation, noise, aging, travel, or underlying health conditions. Adaptogenic herbs help regulate hormones and stress responses, supporting calmer behavior and benefiting overall health.
Among the list of adaptogens used in companion animal nutrition and supplementation, four consistently stand out for dogs and cats:
While each of these adaptogens offers valuable benefits, ashwagandha has emerged as a clear leader due to its depth of research and versatility.
Ashwagandha has been used for thousands of years in Ayurvedic medicine. And today, thanks largely to Ixoreal Biomed, the producer of KSM-66 Ashwagandha, modern science is validating traditional uses, including uses for companion animals.
“People have been using adaptogens like ashwagandha to manage stress for thousands of years, and modern science supports its use in humans,” says Kartikeya Baldwa, CEO of Ixoreal Biomed. “However, we wanted to go the extra mile. We’ve always known ashwagandha had similar benefits for companion animals, and the research we’re conducting demonstrates that it’s among the most beneficial adaptogens for pet health.”
While all adaptogens support stress relief in dogs and cats, KSM-66 Ashwagandha stands apart. It’s a full-spectrum, root-only extract that’s been the subject of multiple human and veterinary clinical studies. It’s the safest and only clinically proven ashwagandha for pets, and there are studies demonstrating its ability to:
This combination of safety, efficacy, and clinical validation makes it the superior choice for ashwagandha and one of the best adaptogens for pet stress. It also has a neutral flavor that doesn’t alter palatability when it’s included in pet foods, treats, supplements, and other products.
Learn more about KSM-66 Ashwagandha as an adaptogen for dogs and cats.
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Animal Wellness is North America’s top natural health and lifestyle magazine for dogs and cats, with a readership of over one million every year. AW features articles by some of the most renowned experts in the pet industry, with topics ranging from diet and health related issues, to articles on training, fitness and emotional well being.
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Thanks to advances in longevity science, lots of folks are becoming more proactive about health. From hitting your daily step count for cardiovascular vitality to adhering to a strength training routine for life-long mobility, folks want to put in the work early on—so they can feel their best for decades to come.
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It’s hard to make it through the week without hearing someone talking about Ozempic or Wegovy for managing blood sugar and achieving weight loss. In some ways, this is great—we are finally having conversations about the previously taboo topics of weight management and obesity.
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Interest in creatine is at an all-time high. Decades of data have shown this supplement is effective in helping people of all ages and fitness levels build more strength and muscle.* But that’s not all creatine can do. Researchers are now looking at how creatine supports cellular energy throughout the body (including the brain) and how that may influence cognition, recovery, and sleep.*
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“OTC eye drops, like artificial tears, may supplement tear film temporarily, but they do not treat the underlying cause of dry eye,” explains Ragha. So, you might find yourself reaching for those drops every hour, which can be tedious, Ragha points out. Many OTC products also have preservatives, which can cause eye irritation if you use them too often, according to Orr.
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Subtractors, on the other hand, are the habits that chip away at your HRV, often without you realizing it. These include staying up late, eating heavy meals right before bed, drinking alcohol, or skimping on recovery after intense workouts. Even chronic stress, whether from your job, relationships, or endless scrolling, can be a major HRV drain.
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Even better, a positive evening ritual not only improves your mood, it helps reduce mental clutter. “Most of us spend our days in what I call ‘middle gear,’” Foster explains. “We’re constantly multitasking, switching between tabs, emails, and to-dos. By evening, our cognitive bandwidth is shot.”
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We’ve all come home wound up after a long day at work with jangled nerves. Imagine coming home and winding down after singing and dancing for three-and-a-half hours to 65,000 screaming fans. That’s what Taylor Swift had to do after every performance on her Eras Tour.
How did she manage it? As the pop icon recently explained on late night with Stephen Colbert, some of her go-to post-show de-stressing techniques are exactly what you’d imagine. She changes out of her costume and gets straight into the bath for what she calls “mermaid time.” Then she orders a ton of room service.
She also signs about 2,000 CDs. That might sound like the least relatable, most pop star thing you could possibly do to end the day. But as she talked about her post-concert ritual, I realized her technique is actually a variation of a research-backed stress-busting approach that’s recommended by psychologists for all of us non-superstars too.
“After the show, you know that kind of feeling where you’re sort of like a flickering light bulb? That’s crazy,” Swift says, describing her post-concert mental state. “That’s hard to go to sleep after.”
While few of us have completed record-breaking world tours, most of us can recognize the wired refusal of your nervous system to calm down that she describes. And many of us will sympathize with the impulse to put on some athleisure and shove french fries in our mouths as a coping mechanism.
Fewer of us would think to write our own names over and over a couple of thousand times. Signing CDs, Swift explains, isn’t a promotional requirement of pop stardom (at least that’s not all it is). It’s also a way to use simple, repetitive physical activity to calm her adrenalized brain.
“My profession,” she explains, “is coming up with ideas for stuff, so if I can turn off the ideas for a second, very exciting.” One best ways to do that on tour, she discovered, is “doing tactile hand activity” like signing CDs.
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Jessica Stillman
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Itching, redness, digestive upset, food sensitivities: Skin conditions and stomach issues are common in dogs. While it’s hard to see a dog struggle with discomfort, you can help alleviate symptoms with a few simple changes, and your veterinarian can provide professional guidance. Let’s explore canine skin and stomach health problems and why specialty grain-free dog food is an excellent first step on the road to recovery.
Common stomach issues in dogs include vomiting, diarrhea, gas, and chronic digestive upset. These symptoms may stem from diet changes, food allergies, stress, parasites, or gut imbalances. Skin issues often show up as itching, redness, dry patches, hot spots, or hair loss. Frequent causes include allergies, fleas, irritants, or infections. However, common skin problems can also start in the gut. For example, inflammation, microbiome imbalances, or food sensitivities in the digestive system can trigger immune reactions that show up externally.
If your dog starts exhibiting signs of trouble, consult your veterinarian for guidance. From there, you can help manage symptoms with a few diet and lifestyle changes:
Diet: Choose a balanced, grain-free diet with high-quality ingredients and novel proteins. Additionally, avoid changing their diet once you find something that works.
Gut support: Consider a food or supplement that contains prebiotics and probiotics to support a balanced gut microbiome.
Parasite control: Take steps to protect your pup from flea bites, ticks, and other external parasites that can cause allergic reactions and skin irritation.
Identify allergies: Work with your vet to identify potential food or environmental allergens that could be causing skin infections or stomach issues.
Manage stress: Keep a predictable routine that includes daily exercise and mental enrichment, keep your home quiet and calm, and focus on positive interactions with other people and animals.
Environmental triggers: Keep your house clean to eliminate dust and other allergens/irritants, use animal-friendly cleaners, and only use canine grooming products on your dog.
Diet can be a game-changer for skin and stomach health issues, even if food is just one piece of the puzzle. Here are some things to look for in a specialty food:
Earthborn Holistic Coastal Catch™ is an excellent choice for a dog with sensitive skin or stomach. Highly nutritious and crafted with grain-free, hypoallergenic ingredients, Coastal Catch is gentle on the digestive system and skin. The high-protein recipe features fish protein as the number one ingredient from a tasty blend of herring, salmon, and Pacific whiting meals. It also features nutrient-dense superfoods like flaxseed, blueberries, and cranberries, along with:
Made in the USA with high-quality ingredients, Earthborn Holistic is part of a family-owned company that was founded in 1926. Over the decades, they’ve committed themselves to supporting pet health with quality ingredients, supporting the planet with sustainability initiatives, and supporting people with charitable outreach.
Visit Earthborn Holistic to learn more about Coastal Catch and other great recipes!
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Animal Wellness is North America’s top natural health and lifestyle magazine for dogs and cats, with a readership of over one million every year. AW features articles by some of the most renowned experts in the pet industry, with topics ranging from diet and health related issues, to articles on training, fitness and emotional well being.
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Stress is a normal part of life for companion animals. Acute stress lasts for only a short time and can be triggered by things like loud noises or the smell of a predator. This brief reaction is beneficial, as it helps animals survive in challenging situations. However, when stress becomes chronic—lasting for days, weeks, or even months—it can take a serious toll on an animal’s physical and emotional health. Over time, chronic stress has been linked to a weakened immune system, skin and coat problems, digestive issues, unwanted behaviors, additional strain on the heart, and even chronic disease. With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at how chronic stress impacts dogs and cats and how to manage it with ashwagandha.
When a dog or cat experiences stress, their hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis releases hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, increasing heart rate, blood pressure, and blood glucose. And when stress is constant, the HPA axis remains overactive. Over time, the prolonged elevation of stress hormones impacts the whole body and can:
Stress can cause immune cells to produce pro-inflammatory cytokines. In the short term, these molecules help fight infections and promote healing. But over time, chronic inflammation can contribute to long-term health problems, such as dermatitis, arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and some cancers. Therefore, reducing stress plays an important role in protecting overall health and longevity.
Addressing chronic stress in animals starts with pinpointing the cause, but the solution usually involves a multifaceted approach that includes:
Beyond that, feeding an adaptogenic herb like ashwagandha will help dogs and cats fight stress naturally. That’s because it supports the HPA axis and regulates cortisol and cytokines while increasing GABA and serotonin.
KSM-66 Ashwagandha is the safest and only clinically proven ashwagandha for pets. It has 46 certifications for safety and efficacy and is the most clinically studied ashwagandha on the market. Moreover, veterinary studies with KSM-66 Ashwagandha demonstrate its ability to help animals with chronic stress because it can:
What’s more, KSM-66 has a neutral taste, so it doesn’t change the flavor of formulations when it’s added to foods, treats, supplements, and other pet products.
Learn more about how to manage stress with ashwagandha and the other ways KSM-66 supports pet health.
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Animal Wellness is North America’s top natural health and lifestyle magazine for dogs and cats, with a readership of over one million every year. AW features articles by some of the most renowned experts in the pet industry, with topics ranging from diet and health related issues, to articles on training, fitness and emotional well being.
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If you’re someone who’s constantly “on,” Truvaga Plus is like having a pocket-sized calm button. It doesn’t require hours of meditation or a full wellness routine overhaul—just a few mindful minutes to help your nervous system catch up with your life. I’m not saying it’s magic (I still have my Type-A moments), but it’s one of the few wellness tools I’ve actually stuck with. And for something that fits in the palm of your hand, that’s pretty powerful.
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The holidays are often portrayed as cozy, joyful, and gratitude-filled, yet for many, Thanksgiving can also stir up a very real sense of stress, anxiety, or emotional overload. Pressure to host the perfect gathering, family dynamics, travel logistics, food guilt, sibling comparison, loneliness and even grief can take a toll.
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Stressed? Absolutely. My flight was delayed, and delayed, and delayed. An accident jammed up traffic around the airport. My driver took a wrong turn. Instead of a 6-hour cushion, I made it to the conference with 20 minutes to spare before I went onstage. No sound check. No slide check. No time to go over a few cues with the techs.
No time to do anything but worry my keynote would fall flat.
As Inc. colleague Justin Bariso says about emotional intelligence, my emotions were working against me, not for me. It’s hard to do your best when you feel anxious, nervous, or pressured; reams of research show stress negatively affects performance.
But not always.
The Yerkes-Dodson law is a psychological principle that describes the relationship between arousal (not that kind of arousal) and performance. Too much stress, and performance declines.
But up to a certain point, anxiety and stress actually improve performance.
How much stress is too much stress? Clearly, that depends. Feeling stressed because I’m running five minutes behind when I planned to get to the airport is unlikely to affect how I drive.
Spending all day worrying about whether I’d make it to an event on time, and having those fears nearly realized, is a different story.
Again, though, not always.
When something happens that makes you feel nervous, challenged, scared, etc., your body responds. Your heart rate increases. Your breathing gets faster, and shallower. Your body temperature rises. Those responses are automatic and normal.
Having your body spot a problem or challenge and say, “Let’s gear up!” is the upside of the Yerkes-Dodson law.
The downside? You also vasoconstrict: the muscles inside your blood vessels tighten, making the space inside smaller. Vasoconstriction raises your blood pressure and reduces circulation to your extremities (which is why, when you feel super-stressed, your fingers and toes can feel cold.)
That natural response to a more serious problem or challenge is terrible for you, and therefore for how you perform… unless you apply some emotional intelligence, and do a little cognitive reframing.
A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that when people viewed their stress response as helpful — when their body’s natural response to stress, like increased heart and respiration rate, signaled their rising to the challenge — they didn’t vasoconstrict. Their blood pressure didn’t rise.
In fact, their physiological profiles looked like what Stanford professor Kelly McGonigal describes in her 2013 TED Talk as what happens in “moments of joy and courage.”
Simply thinking about stress differently — seeing stress not as a problem, but as a good thing — changed how their bodies responded. Their “arousal” level stayed on the helpful side of the Yerkes-Dodson law curve.
So as the sound tech fitted my mic, I took a deep breath and decided that arriving in the nick of time was a good thing. I didn’t have time to pace. I didn’t have time to peek out and see the hundreds of people finding their seats. I didn’t have time to make small talk with people backstage to help the time pass.
I tried to smile and see being “late” as a challenge to overcome. After all, pressure is something you want to feel. Feeing pressure means you’re in a position to do something meaningful. Something important. Something where the outcome truly matters.
As Billie Jean King says, “Pressure is a privilege, and champions adjust.”
Did my reframing work? Not completely. Looking back, I give myself an A-minus. (OK, a B-plus.) I was still a little too amped up, and rushed the first minute. I could have read the room a little better. Overall, I wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked.
But I performed a lot better than I would had I not reframed the events leading up to my keynote.
When you feel nervous or stressed — when your heart rate rises, and your breathing quickens — reframe the feeling and let those emotions work for you. See it as your body rising to a challenge, helping you be more able to step in or step up. See stress as a signal that you have the opportunity to make your life better.
Sure, you will never totally control how you feel.
But with a little reframing, you can stay on the positive side of the Yerkes-Dodson law curve, and use stress as a tool to help you perform at your best.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
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Jeff Haden
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(CNN) — Global rates of hypertension, or high blood pressure, in childhood and adolescence have nearly doubled since 2000, putting more kids at risk for poor health later in life.
“In 2000, about 3.4% of boys and 3% of girls had hypertension. By 2020, those numbers had risen to 6.5% and 5.8% respectively,” said Dr. Peige Song, a researcher from the School of Public Health at Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China. Song is one of the authors of a study describing the findings that published Wednesday in the journal The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health.
Children who have hypertension could be at greater risk later on of developing heart disease –– the No. 1 cause of death in the United States, said Dr. Mingyu Zhang, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He was not involved in the research.
“The good news is that this is a modifiable risk,” Song said in an email. “With better screening, earlier detection, and a stronger focus on prevention, especially around healthy weight and nutrition, we can intervene before complications arise.”
The rise in hypertension in children is likely due to many factors.
Childhood obesity is a significant risk factor, because it is associated with factors like insulin resistance, inflammation and vascular function, Song said.
Dietary factors such as consuming high levels of sodium and ultraprocessed food can also contribute to hypertension risk, as well as poor sleep quality, stress and genetic predisposition, she said.
Many children also get less movement than past generations and spend more time on sedentary activities, like screen use, which may be affecting risk, she said.
“We are also starting to know that other factors, including environmental pollutants, can contribute,” Zhang added.
Zhang served as senior author on a previous study that showed a connection between prebirth exposure to chemicals called PFAS — a class of about 15,000 human-made compounds linked to cancers, endocrine-related conditions and developmental issues in children — and childhood hypertension. Short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS are sometimes called “forever chemicals” because they don’t fully break down in the environment.
The biggest takeaway of this research for families is not to assume high blood pressure is only a problem for adults, Song said.
If you are worried about your child’s risk for obesity or hypertension, pressure, shame and restriction are not the best approaches.
Instead, focus on increasing healthy behaviors in a happy way, said Jill Castle, a pediatric dietitian in Massachusetts, in a previous CNN article.
“The goal of the food pillar is really to embrace flexibility with food and to emphasize foods that are highly nutritious and … to allow foods also that might be minimally nutritious within the diet in ways that can be fully enjoyed and flexible,” Castle said.
Try to prioritize sitting down as a family for meals and avoid labeling foods as “good” or “bad,” said Castle, author of “Kids Thrive at Every Size.”
“The clean plate club or rewarding with sweets — they might work in the moment, but they don’t do a good job of establishing the self-trust and an intuitive, good relationship with food as kids grow up,” Castle said.
The study didn’t just track rates in the United States. Instead, researchers analyzed data from 96 studies across 21 countries.
Another important consideration the study team made is how blood pressure differs in and outside the doctor’s office. Some children might have normal blood pressure at home, but a higher reading in the office, while others might have a lower blood pressure in the office than they normally would.
By including data from both office visits and at-home blood pressure readings, the researchers were able to include hypertension rates that are “masked,” or wouldn’t be caught in a doctor’s visit, Zhang said. Masked hypertension was found to be the most common kind, according to the data.
“This is important because it means that many children with true hypertension could go undetected if we rely only on office blood pressure readings,” he said.
The result show that one reading may not be enough, and there may be a need for more scalable solutions for better monitoring and care of hypertension around the world, Song added.
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