Weather we are in relatively good health but want it to get better or we suffer from a more chronic illness, it is important to honestly look at our contribution to a lack of excellent health.
Stress has everything to do with our health. Take the simple case of our ancestors who were confronted in the wild by a dangerous animal. Their brain sensed the danger and carried that signal to the whole body: blood pressure went up to physically deal with the danger at hand and so did the blood sugar and the heart rate. The body diverted blood from essential organs to the heart and the muscles to physically cope with the situation. Fast forward to today where our stress is constant: all day, all week sometimes for months. The body still mounts the same response and blood flow is redistributed away from essential organs in the body. And the result can be blood pressure, heart attacks, dementia, depression, autoimmune diseases or cancer.
Hard science, a sound understanding of physiology and countless anecdotal stories are showing how concrete the link between stress and health is. Look through numerous studies done by organizations like the Institute of Heart Math in California, who are business productivity consultants or look at the emerging medical literature closely and the data is amazingly strong. An article written by Dr. Tetsuro Horia and colleagues tells us of the work done in their lab tracing mental stress and how that directly affects the immune system by way of our sympathetic nervous system (The part of the nervous system that deals with fight or flight). In other words chronic stress throws the immune system into imbalance. A recent article done in the journal “Health Psychology’ showed that insecure people had a higher risk of cardiovascular and chronic diseases. If you consider yourself insecure this is great news because there are powerful tools of self-exploration that can change your perspective to one of self love. Not only does your life improve dramatically but so does your health.
A disruptive new technology named ‘Brainwave optimization’ is getting great results treating ‘medical conditions’ like post traumatic stress syndrome’, addictions and chronic pain among others. What does it do? Balance and help your nervous system get into synchrony.
A singer by the name of Greg Tamblyn wrote a song about a woman named Evy McDonald who healed herself from a fatal disease called Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ‘Lou Gehrig’s disease’. To those naysayers I say only one thing ‘Its a documented true story”.
Of course (once considered renegade) practitioners in the health care system like Bernie Siegel, Dean Ornish and Carl Simonton have been saying this for decades but now the understanding and tools have improved even more.
Personally I find that more than 90% of my patients with chronic diseases including cancer have a history of severe physical, chemical, mental or emotional stress in the five to ten years prior to onset of illness. And I find that those most open to addressing these factors have a much higher and faster recovery rate.
Notice the title of this blog is ‘work with your stress’ not ‘avoid stress’. It would be the most terrible thing we can do to lock ourselves in a dark room and shut ourselves off from the world, our relationships, our work and not bring our song to the world. A lot of us are doing that by watching endless hours of television, eating junk food or with other addictions. This leads to a nervous system imbalance of the opposite kind with as bad if not worse health consequences.
So whats a human to do? The key is that chronic long term stress in today’s world is more a result of a conditioned response to an outside situation than the situation itself. When we look on stress as a way to grow and learn instead of viewing ourselves as helpless victims of our life condition, everything changes. Once we get out of that victim mentality, we have already overcome one of our major obstacles. When a situation is changeable we change it. When its not, we learn to make our response to it productive and a powerful tool for growth. And we find ways to support ourselves physically, mentally and emotionally through the process. We eat a healthy diet because our need for essential nutrients like magnesium and the B vitamins increases in these times. Very importantly we give ourselves breaks and take simple practical steps to bring joy back into our lives. We watch those sunsets, smell the roses, play our favorite music, read empowering books that speak to your core and do things we have always wanted to do. We start to live again, little by little. We drop self defeating thoughts and patterns and learn to love ourselves and others more fully. And if our health problems are more severe, we find practitioners who can help us. It far harder to do something on your own than when you have support from others be if friend, family or a dedicated professional.
And if you have reached the end of this blog then “ I didn’t know there was hope” is no longer an excuse. As Glen Frey sings in the Eagle song “ So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains and we never even know we have the key. “
Jonathan V. Wright, M.D., Tahoma Clinic
Leo Galland, MD
Life Extension
Phillip Alexander, BrandMuscle
Tom Peters!
Indulge with AniciaB