I Read the News Today, Oh Boy . . .

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"Ongoing exposure to threat-inducing, depressing material takes its toll," says Dan Shapiro, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

According to Shapiro and others who have studied the phenomenon, disturbing news reports can rev up the production of stress-related hormones. Not only are these likely to put us in a bad mood, they can contribute to a host of serious health problems, including high blood pressure, digestive disorders, depression, and compromised immunity. Indeed, my own blood pressure rose to a borderline high level while I was a news reporter, and I seemed to constantly come down with colds and flus.

There is, however, a simple solution: news fasting. Just as physical fasts allow the body to lighten its load, taking regular breaks from the news can be a crucial way of safeguarding our peace of mind and our health.

Integrative physician Andrew Weil has long recommended such breaks; they're an integral part of the program he outlines in Eight Weeks to Optimum Health (Knopf, 1997). "I think it's useful to broaden the concept of nutrition to include what we put into our consciousness," he writes. "Many people do not exercise much control over that, and as a result take in a lot of mental junk food."

But how to get started? If tuning out completely feels irresponsible, start by paying attention to how different forms of news affect you. If you find yourself predictably feeling helpless, gloomy, or overwhelmed after watching TV news, for example, you may want to get your news in print form, which puts you more in control of which stories to pay attention to and at what pace.

Weil recommends beginning with a complete break, to give yourself a chance to experience how life feels without the constant background din of headlined events and calamities. Once you've done this, you can begin to add media back in little by little -- reading the paper only in the morning, say, when the cacophony of world events may be less likely to interfere with your sleep.

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