When it comes to matters of the mind and our physical health the medical industry was slow to accept that how we think could influence our physical health. Mainstream medicine didn’t really like the idea that emotions could affect health directly and it wasn’t until Hungarian doctor Hans Selye built on the earlier work of Walter Cannon and Claude Bernard that things started to change. Selye’s discovery in the 1930’s of the harmful effects of stress was though more a consequence of his ineptitude at handling small furry rodents than it was a carefully designed plan. While running experiments that involved injecting rats with ovarian extract, Selye noticed that they were developing a host of maladies that seemed inconsistent with the effects of the hormone. Later he was to discover that the responses to the stress of the experiment itself was causing these negative health effects and the first modern theory on the human stress response was born. Since then many scientists have gone on to look deeper at how the human body responds to stress and why. Research has enabled us to better understand the chemical and nervous pathways in the body that communicate our stress responses as well as the structures that drive it and feed it.
Of course, we need our stress responses. Without them even getting out of bed in the morning would be impossible and indeed for the chronically stressed it often is. It’s those unrelenting or repeated stresses that are causing the damage as the systems designed for short-term survival flood the body with powerful hormones that over time can make us fat, depressed, lethargic, forgetful, uninterested in sex, constantly sick, and at greater risk of serious illness like diabetes, heart disease, peptic ulcers, and many more. In the right amounts our stress hormones can help us survive a dangerous situation or perform better on the sports stage, but on a chronic basis they may just be slowly killing us.
Eliminating stress from our clients lives is a Sisyphean task as so many modern stressors are either related to the environment we live and work in, or worse still are simply products of our own minds. Montaigne said “my life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which have never happened” reflecting on how our brains are able to create future events often with negative outcomes. Psychologist Daniel Gilbert links our desire to think ahead to the feeling of being able to in some way control or influence our futures. However it is the lack of control that often causes us great angst and in turn has our stress hormones pumping on a daily basis. Research has shown that the effects of stress are greater in those with no perceived control over their situation, and even worse in those who previously had control only to have had it suddenly removed. Similarly, while we often think of the stressed executive as the prime candidate for stress, the effects are often a lot more pronounced in those lower in the socioeconomic strata and workplace.
We are better off trying to steer our clients down the path of positive coping strategies to help them manage their stress. Short-term strategies such as alcohol, smoking, drug use, and of course reaching for the Dairy Milk, all provide us with an immediate escape from the travails of our mind. But these easy-outs ultimately lead us deeper into the well of despair as they suck up valuable chemicals in our brain like dopamine and serotonin, which are already depleted under chronic stress.
Instead as is often the case, the advice for our clients has changed little from that which our grandparents knew intuitively many years before the mechanisms were known. Take some regular exercise (the actual mode of this is less critical than many make out), go for a walk, eat good quality unrefined foods, get a good nights sleep (easier said than done in some cases but often the first thing that goes awry under stress), take time out for yourself, enjoy positive relationships with those you work, live, and socialise with, and get some happiness into life. It can seem trite and for many it won’t be that simple, but these methods may offer an alternative or at least an adjunct to the Prozac solution that so many find themselves on now.
Diagnosis of medical illness is a complex science best left to the professionals, but advising and supporting our clients to be healthier and happier isn’t something we should hand over control of so readily, particularly to a system already buckling under the load. As complementary therapists we can, with simple, easy to follow advice and a positive outlook, help educate, inspire, and protect our clients from the damaging effects of chronic stress.
For further reading on this topic Graeme recommends:
- The End of Stress As We Know It: Bruce McEwan
- Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: Robert Sapolsky
- Stumbling On Happiness: Daniel Gilbert
You can hear Graeme speak more on this topic this weekend at the B-Fit Expo and at the Complementary Therapists Association in Putney.
