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Monday, June 21, 2010

Stress Management Made Easy

Is Stress Making You Fat, Dumb, and Sick?


All over the planet people are suffering from the effects of stress.  And there is a very good chance you are also. In fact if you are alive right now living in the 21st century; you have encountered at least one stressful moment in the last 24 hours.  You can’t avoid it and you can’t eliminate 100 percent of it if you intend to live in the 21st century. Stress comes in the form of job stress, family stress, technology stress, information overload stress, financial stress, news stress and many other forms.  Failure to get your stress under control will have three detrimental effects on your health; chronic stress will make you fat, dumb and sick. This article will explain how this happens and what you can do to avoid this situation. 

What is stress? Stress is a physiological response your body goes through when you perceive a threat to your mental, physical, or spiritual well being. Notice I said perceived threat; that means it can be a real threat or an imagined threat. And in most cases the things that produce the most daily stress are not real, or they are incorrectly perceived as a threat and the stress response gets activated. Here is an example: About 20 years ago I was driving from the west coast to the east coast, and while in Dallas pulled off the high way to get something to eat and gas. While waiting at a red light I put in a cassette tape, that’s what we listened to before CD’s. Just as the light changed and I started to move I heard the sound of a car racing its engine and then slamming on their brakes. The sound was so load I thought someone was running into me, so I slammed on my brakes, looked around and though the rare view mirror and there was nobody around, it was 2:00AM in the morning.  At that very instant I realized it was the cassette tape I just put in. If you are old enough you might remember the R&B group The Gap Band and their song “Don’t Burn Rubber on Me”. Here is a YouTube link to it. Listen to it and you will see what scared the heck out of me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb1cpSJtIqM

Now, the point is the thing that stressed me out for that brief moment was all in my imagination. Don’t laugh, most of the things that stress you out are developed in your imagination or you create them and blown them out of proportion. Here’s a few other examples: 
  • Each time you have a negative thought about sitting in traffic that creates stress.
  • When you watch the news and get upset about the latest homicide or robbery that creates stress. 
  • When you read your college class project for the week and think oh-no this is too much, that creates stress. 
  • When you yell at your kids for not picking up their cloths that creates stress.
In fact, every time you make an issue about something that did not go your way it creates stress. Notice that all these events only create stress because of the way you interpret them. You could have chosen to react in the complete opposite of the negative reaction.  

We encounter events all week long that send us into this same negative reaction mode and the stress just keeps building and building. At the physiological level what is happening is extremely harmful to your health. When we react in a stressful manner we activate the Stress Response (SR); this is the fight or flight response, we will call it SR.  You activate your SR when you see or hear something that you interpret as harmful, negative or you just don’t like it, and you make an issue about it. The SR was a great idea when we lived in the jungle and needed to run from hungry tigers or other people that wanted to kill us. But evolution has not modified this system, so it kicks into play all day long when you have these negative responses.

How Stress makes you sick, fat and dumb.

When this SR is activate on a regular basis three things happen that you will not like. 
First, the hormone cortisol is released into your blood stream and research has shown that excess cortisol can direct your body to release excess amounts of cholesterol. And excess cholesterol is associated with plaque buildup that leads to hypertension and coronary heart disease. Excess cortisol is also associated with the weakening of your immune system. When your immune system is weakened you become susceptible to sickness and all kinds of diseases. 

Second, cortisol is also associated with weight gain. There is a direct link between stress and food. When we are under stress, food becomes a mechanism to control the stress. When we place food into our stomach a message is sent to our brain that produces a calming effect and decreases the intensity of the stress felt throughout the body. Eating to calm our stress is such a natural process; many people never even realize that’s why they are eating. And if that’s not enough, Dr. Oz says cortisol also causes a build up of fat around the abdomen and thighs. So under stress you eat more and it sticks to your belly and thighs. 

Finally chronic stress overloads our brain with hormones that were intended for short term emergencies. These hormones damage and kill brain cells in the part of your brain used for memory and learning. So, now you can’t remember or learn. If it wasn’t enough just being fat, you have to get sick and dumb all from stress. So what can you do? 

Symptoms of Stress 

According to the Mayo Clinic we experience stress in three ways, body symptoms, thoughts, and behavior. However, the three steps we are going to talk about are designed to catch the stress before it develops into these symptoms. These steps are not a replacement for professional health care. If you are suffering from the below listed symptoms you may need to consult your health care provider. 

Body Symptoms:
  • Headache
  • Back pain
  • Chest pain
  • Heart disease
  • Heart palpitations
  • High blood pressure
  • Decreased immunity
  • Stomach upset
  • Sleep problems
Thoughts
  • Anxiety
  • Restlessness
  • Worrying
  • Irritability
  • Depression
  • Sadness
  • Anger
  • Feeling insecure
  • Lack of focus
  • Burnout
  • Forgetfulness
Behavior
  • Overeating
  • Under eating
  • Angry outbursts
  • Drug abuse 
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Increased smoking
  • Social withdrawal
  • Crying spells
  • Relationship conflicts
Immediate Steps for Managing Stress  

Step one is to recognize when you are becoming stress. You can not minimize your stress until you know when it is affecting you. Lets use an example of your company is downsizing and your boss just called you into his office. You immediately get upset and say “OH Shoot I can’t believe they are firing me”.  This thought activates the stress response. You know it because you just started breathing hard, sweating, thinking negative thoughts, and you know from reading the first part of this article that those negative thoughts are activating the SR. Ok good you understand step one. 

Step two is to immediately stop the negative thought.  For most of us these thoughts are automatic and they occur without us ever thinking about them, we just react. What you are learning here is to respond with thinking rather than reacting with behavior. To stop the negative thought pattern you are going to attack it with a giant warrior called NATAK, Negative Automatic Thought Armed Killer. NATAK is a 9 foot tall steel and concrete warrior carrying a giant ray gun, 6 foot long sword and a shield; and he kills negative thoughts before they can fully activate your SR. Every time you have a negative stress activating thought you will say “Get-em NATAK” or “Sick-em NATAK”.  You can do it out load or to yourself. I do it out load and smile at how people react. They look around and say excuse me or are you talking to me. I just smile and say “just killing some negative thoughts.” This action has the immediate effect of stopping the negative thought before it get to the part of the brain that activates the SR. With practice you can learn to do it instantly every time a stress activating negative thought comes into your mind. 

Step three after you have killed the negative thought you want to replace it with a positive thought. In other words instead of reacting you now can respond. In our example your boss calls and says can you come into my office, you sense the negative thought and say “Get-em NATAK”, and you immediately feel a sense of calm.  Next you immediately replace the negative thought with, “I don’t like this Job any way.” In psychology they call that rationalizing, but if he’s going to fire you, so what. Actually a better replacement would be a positive thought like “Humm could I be getting a promotion.” Now you may be thinking this is ridicules, but remember the idea is to turn off the stress response so you can keep from becoming fat, dumb and sick.  Plus if you are getting fired what good does it do to also get stressed. And since most of the things that stress us are imagined what if you got all stress and your boss wasn’t firing you; you just contributed to being fat, dumb and sick for no reason. 

So the first lesson in managing stress is to stop the negative thoughts that create stress all day long and replace them with positive thoughts. This is can easily be done by using the NATAK warrior and with a little practice you will become a master of your thought and close your mind off to the automatic negative thoughts to lead to a life of being fat, dumb and sick. 

Bonus

Since you read this fare you get a bonus step. We already talk about the SR and what activates; but what if there was a reverse response to the SR. What if there was a way to reverse the SR. What if there was a way to activate an immediate relaxation response. 

Well there is, and it is called the Relaxation Response.  Discovered by Dr. Herbert Benson and written about in his best seller The Relaxation Response in 1975. Dr Benson discovered that the SR was associated with breathing and it could be stopped and reversed and a relaxation response activated by learning how to breathing properly. Today this is called diaphragmatic breathing and is a very simple process. When under stress start by taking a moment to relax, then focus on taking three to five deep breaths and pay close attention to the air coming into your nose or mouth, going down your lungs and feel your stomach rise. As you exhale feel your stomach descend as you feel the air leave out though your longs and nose or mouth. Don’t hold your breath and keep your focus on the four steps. Do this 

The four steps are:
  1. As you take the air into your nose or mouth feel it and sense it coming in. 
  2. Take a slight pause when your lungs are full and feel your stomach rise. 
  3. Exhale and feel the air slowly leave your lungs and your stomach descend. 
  4. Pause when your lungs are empty for a second and take another slow deep breath. 
Diaphragmatic breathing redirects your focus and attention off of what initiated the stress and turns off the ST.  

Reference:
Benson, H. (2000). The Relaxation Response. New York, NY:  Harpertorch
Mayo Clinic Staff (2009). Stress symptoms: Effects on your body, feelings and behavior. Retrieved June 23, 2010 from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stress-symptoms/sr00008_d 
Seaward, B. L. (2009). Stress Management: Principles and Strategies for Health and Well-Being. Sudbury, Ma: Jones and Bartlett Publishers

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