The Peace Within

The quick answer:  Worried sick?  Better take control of your stress.
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A Cabin in the Woods

Way back in the ‘30s, my grandfather had the brilliant idea to build a cabin in the woods.  I loved its rough-sawn exterior and knotty pine interior.  To get to it you left the highway, crossed over a wooden bridge, and took a narrow dirt road through the forest.  The cabin had a large shady porch perfect for sitting and reading.  For 75 years that cabin—shown above—was a gathering place for our family.  Though our means were modest, our little cabin in the woods made us children rich as any king. 

My fondest childhood memories revolve around that cabin.  I remember climbing upstairs to bed, a little frightened to be alone, and going to sleep while the flame from a kerosene lamp flickered on the walls.  I awoke in the morning to the sound and smell of wood crackling downstairs in the fireplace.  The morning sun, shining through the trees, replaced the darkness of the night.  I had survived the night to enjoy another heavenly day at the cabin.

Life can be stressful, even for kids, but at our cabin I never felt anything but peace. 

Dr Dean Ornish

A current N. Y. Times article, “Dieting for Health, Not Weight” by Dr. Dean Ornish—famous for advocating prevention of heart disease through lifestyle improvement—supports the position of Word of Wisdom Living:

“In 35 years of medical research . . . we have seen that patients who ate mostly plant-based meal . . . engaged in moderate exercise and stress-management techniques . . . . [enjoyed]improved blood flow and significantly less inflammation which matters because chronic inflammation is an underlying cause of heart disease and many forms of cancer. We found that this program may also slow, stop or reverse the progression of early stage prostate cancer, as well as reverse the progression of Type 2 diabetes.”

That’s a lot but Dr. Ornish found additional health benefits for his plant-based, low-meat program, including:

1. In just three months of healthful living, the expression of over 500 genes that protect against disease was activated,
2. Telomerase length (indicative of gene health and longevity) improved,
3. Weight loss (loss of 24 pounds in a year and 12 lbs of net weight loss maintained after five years.

Dr. Ornish’s program, as noted above is based on a whole foods diet, exercise, and management of stress.  This post is about stress.

Stress

There may be shortages of some things in life, but there’s always enough stress to go around.  But stress, though a bit is necessary to get us moving in the morning, is toxic in excess.  Most of our Healthy Changes are about eating right, four support exercise, but just one addresses stress.  So, for your own good, please take some time to ponder this Healthy Change.

We discussed stress in a post last year.  We talked about Hans Selye (1907-1982) the doctor best known for linking chronic stress with disease.  We discussed the role chronic stress plays in premature aging (the meanest cut), cancer, and heart disease. The list goes on.

There’s a ratchet quality to stress—after a stress episode, we often don’t return to the relaxed state.  Rather there is a residue that remains so that in the next bout—and there’ll always be another episode—we’re driven to higher and higher levels of stress.  When caught in these chronic stress cycles, we take it as the new “normal.”  Like fish in water, we can be quite unaware of a toxic stress level.  This is very common when the economy is bad, like right now.

Finding Peace

The key is not to run faster but to step out of the stress cycle.   Here are seven ways from the prior post:

1. Family: The supporting love of family can be a great comfort.  Who hasn’t come home from work, carrying all the troubles of the day on their shoulders, and found instant relief by getting down and wrestling with the kids?
2. Best friends:  A study of English children found being with their best friend gave the best relief from stress.  Cortisol, the stress hormone produced by the adrenal glands, was most effectively relieved for children by best friends.  Who’s your best friend?
3. Music: The beautiful wife just saw a bumper sticker for the classical music station:  “Less stress, more Strauss.”
4. Exercise:  Strengthening the body helps it to relax and stimulates a similar process for the mind.
5. Worship:  Don’t you find, in the rhythm of church ritual, clarification of what’s really important?  Whatever your faith, the God who orders the universe knows your name and proffers His peace. 
6. Meditation:  Thinking more deeply about whatever troubles you can lead to new insights, and better paths to follow. 
7. Laugh:  Remember Ferris Bueller?  Life goes by pretty fast; if you don’t stop and have a little fun, you just might miss out

Please Comment:  Too much  stress for comfort?  Share your best stress reduction experiences.   Been worried sick?  It happens.  How do you get well?  Stress is one ailment where you can be your own best doctor.

Finding Peace

The quick answer:  We need a little stress to get out of bed in the morning, but too much stress can put us back into bed, maybe a hospital bed. 

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Ever feel like you’re in an endless war; never finding real peace?  Welcome to the scary world of chronic stress.

Some years ago, our local hospital put on a series of six lectures about stress.  (Notice how just putting the work stress in boldface gives you a little adrenaline bump?)  Each week the docs discussed the effects of stress on their area of specialty, and told what they could do about it.  A cardiologist explained the role of stress in heart disease and then explained a relatively new procedure, coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG).  Because CABG starts with the surgeon cutting your chest apart with a power saw, it made a big impression.  A rheumatologist told how stress-related rheumatoid arthritis ravages the joints and explained how those hips and knees could now be replaced.  Ouch!—another operation with a saw.  A G.I. guy told how stress affected the digestive system, and so on.  It was plenty scary and each week the audience grew. 

The last lecture was by a psychologist who gave us some ideas about how to manage our stress.  I’ve never seen an audience so eager to hear a message.  I learned three lessons from the seminar:

1. In each stress-related disease, prevention was way better than the treatment.
2. Prevention translated to stress management.
3. Stress management requires a new discipline.  You can’t just do the old stuff faster or more efficiently; you have to step out of the cycle. 

Hans Selye (1907-1982)

Selye made the first modern connection between stress and disease (the ancient doctors had figured it out also).  Selve identified the stages of protracted stress—how we can go from alarm, to resistance (fight or flight), to exhaustion.  Though stress came in many forms, Selye recognized there was a common response in the body (involving the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal glands, or HPA, axis).  From this common response, a variety of diseases could result, unique to the person.  One person gets ulcers, another rheumatoid arthritis; here is high blood pressure, over there, heart disease; this person gets an allergy, while her friend gets an aggressive form of breast cancer.  Beware the pathology of chronic stress.

Here’s another—more scary—effect of stress:  It accelerates aging.  Cortisol is the body’s primary stress hormone and while it makes you run faster, it also causes you to age faster.  We’ve talked about other aging factors before: like elevated blood glucose and insulin from too much sugar, or an excess of free radicals from too little natural food containing antioxidants.  Today we focus on controlling our cortisol, the stress hormone.

Stress and Cancer

Stress increases the risk of cancer, though the pathway remains unknown.  A 2010 study led by Yale’s Dr. Tian Xu found a genetic mechanism for stress-induced cancers.  The risk of cancer in a cell rises if several genes are simultaneously defective.  Working with fruit flies Xu demonstrated that even if the genetic defects were in different cells, stress (caused by wounds) drove intercellular signaling that joined the effects and increased the risk of cancer.  So, though the mechanism is genetic, stress is a factor in cancer.

 The stress of life is a factor in aggressive breast cancers.  Previous studies had shown higher breast cancer rates among socially isolated laboratory rats.  Now a study of cancer patients, just reported, finds tumor aggressiveness in humans linked to stress levels.  More stress means more aggressive cancers.

Stress and Heart Disease

For a generation we wrongly blamed coronary heart disease (CHD) on dietary cholesterol and saturated fat, even though these foods had been part of our diet for generations before the rise of CHD.  Scientists are now recognizing that CHD is multi-factorial—that a variety of ills contribute.  One cause was given more attention by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick in his book, The Great Cholesterol Con.  Kendrick theorizes that stress, perhaps more than poor diet or lack of exercise, is a main cause of CHD.

The World of Stress

Cycles:  There are cycles to stress—daily (like getting to work on time), weekly (Sunday night worry about undone homework), monthly (bill payment), and even annually (tax deadlines, or Holiday worries).  The laws of Nature do not restrict stress: it can be created out of thin air, and in unlimited quantity.  Stress can have a “ratchet effect”, meaning it rises higher and higher, but doesn’t necessarily decrease.   

Ownership:  To manage stress we must take ownership.  If we blame our stress on events, like the economy, or other people, we are also saying it’s out of our control.  For stress management, control is everything.  The stress process is unconscious, but it is not above management.  Stress can be internal—we cause it ourselves, for example, by failing to plan and then being overrun by events.  Stress is also external, a subconscious response to events or people.  An underlying cause of external stress is fear.  Fear has many forms: fear of authority figures, fear of failure, fear of the unknown.  I’ve lived a few years and had my share of worries and I say this with authority:  Our fears rarely happen but can be disabling. 

Fear:  President F. D. Roosevelt spoke of fear in a wise and calming way, saying the only thing to fear was fear itself.  There is a promise in the scriptures that preparation protects from fear.  I remember a proverb from El Salvador where life could be uncertain:  “The prepared man is worth two men.”  In our uncertain economy many worry about their job.  Making the preparations that improve one’s ability to get another job will reduce stress.  Money in the bank reduces stress also.

Planning:  Procrastination, I think, is the most common cause of stress.  The cure lies in planning.  Just making a “to do” list reduces stress.  Ranking the items by importance, A, B, or C, and resolving to do—today—the most important first (often they’re the hardest so get put off) will take a big load off your shoulders.  The good we can do in life is reduced by every procrastination. 

Managing Stress

The key is not to run faster but to step out of the stress cycle.   Here are seven ways:

1. Family: The supporting love of family can be a great comfort.  Who hasn’t come home from work, carrying all the troubles of the day on their shoulders, and found instant relief by getting down and wrestling with the kids?
2. Best friends:  A study of English children found being with their best friend gave the best relief from stress.  Cortisol, the stress hormone produced by the adrenal glands, was most effectively relieved for children by best friends. 
3. Music: The beautiful wife just saw a bumper sticker for the classical music station:  “Less stress, more Strauss.”
4. Exercise:  Strengthening the body helps it to relax and stimulates a similar process for the mind.
5. Worship:  Don’t you find, in the rhythm of church ritual, clarification of what’s really important?  Whatever your faith, the God who orders the universe knows your name and proffers His peace. 
6. Meditation:  Thinking more deeply about whatever troubles you can lead to new insights, and better paths to follow. 
7. Laugh:  Remember Ferris Bueller?  Life goes by pretty fast; if you don’t stop and have a little fun, you just might miss out.

Healthy Change

The 52 Healthy Changes can be unsettling, even add to your stress.  To counter this, we suggested writing weekly menus and shopping lists to protect you from the last minute panic over what to have for dinner. 

Please comment:  Ever been worried sick?  How do you manage the stress in your life?   

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.