News & Events

The Yale Research Symposium on Complementary and Integrative Medicine

Thursday, March 4, 2010
Yale University School of Medicine

Monthly Meetings

We usually meet on the last Wednesday of every month. These meetings are designed to build interpersonal connections and community, inform members about the work done by our committees in the previous month, and provide opportunities for learning and collaboration. All interested students, faculty, clinicians, and Yale affiliates are welcome to attend our monthly meetings.

Previous Meeting:
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
TAC N203 , Yale School of Medicine
4:30 - 6:00pm
Rajita Sinha, Ph.D.

How to Stay in Control: Managing Stress and Bad Habits

Topics of Discussion

• stress increases risk of various chronic diseases
• stress also promotes bad habits and addictive behaviors which in turn increases stress
• what to do to stay in control and manage stress
• where the science of stress is headed in terms of new therapeutics

This presentation will describe the ways in which stress is linked to chronic disease and the critical role that our behaviors and choices play in strengthening that link. Changing those behaviors become a major challenge as does handling stress without resorting to our habitual behaviors. Behavioral strategies to stay in control and new avenues for prevention and treatment will be discussed.

Rajita Sinha, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University and Director of the Yale Stress Center (YSC) that focuses on understanding the effects of stress on behavior, in order to improve health outcomes relating to maladaptive behaviors. She has also served as the Director of Addiction Services at the Connecticut Mental Health Center. She is internationally known for her pioneering research on the mechanisms linking stress to addiction. Her research objectives are threefold: (a) to elucidate sex-specific neurobiological mechanisms underlying stress in humans; (b) to examine neurobiological alterations in stress and reward circuits associated with addictive behaviors; and (c) to develop effective stress prevention and treatment strategies that target stress and emotion regulation to break bad habits and improve stress-related health outcomes. These objectives are being accomplished through a series of NIH funded research projects and she has published widely on these topics. She has served on many NIH special emphasis panels, review committees and workshops, presented at numerous national and international conferences, and her work is widely cited.

Past Meeting Topics

12/2009: Immunoregulatory Effects of Bromelain in Allergic Asthma - Eric R. Secor, ND, LAc
10/2009: Ayurvedic History and Context- Frank Ninivaggi, MD
6/2009: Ayurvedic Medicine - Amala Guha, PhD, MPH, MA
4/2009: Chinese Medicine, Western Science, and Acupuncture - Sherwin B. Nuland, MD
3/2009: Reflections on the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public - David L. Katz, MD, MPH
2/2009: Discerning use of conventional medicine, CAM, or both to help patients heal - Beatriz R.Olson, MD
12/2008: Piloting a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Curriculum for Internal Medicine Residents - Auguste H. Fortin, MD, MPH
10/2008:The Art of Healing and Survival Behavior for the Doctor and the Patient - Bernie Siegel, MD
9/2008: An Introduction to the Therapeutic Uses of Hypnosis - Lawrence Vitulano, PhD
7/2008: Housewives, Midwives, and Physicians: Early American Women in Medicine - Rebecca Tannenbaum, PhD
6/2008: What does Science have to say about Subtle Energy Medicine? - Gene Ang, PhD
5/2008: A Year in the Life of Integrative Medicine at Yale - Rachel Friedman, MD
4/2008: A Case-Based Exploration of Functional Medicine - Mark Hyman, MD
3/2008: The Slippery Slope of Stress: Lessons from Katrina and Applications of Integrative Approaches in Addressing Stress and Trauma - Henri Roca, MD, LAc
2/2008: Chiropractic Care At A Major Medical Center - Anthony Lisi, DC
1/2008: Naturopathic Medicine: Epidemiology and Approaches to Winter Ailments -
Ather Ali, ND, MPH and Joshua P. Levitt, ND