Well the holidays are upon us. I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I have heard from a few of you that you were actually out there at 4 in the morning for the Black Friday sales. Some good bargains were to be found, but 4am is waaaaaay to early for me. For most of us the holiday season is probably the most stressful time of year. Not only is it a lot to get done, but the weather turns cold and dark. More people die in December than any other month. Now is a very good time to lower your stress.
Everyone knows stress is killing us, but do you actually know what stress is? When you ask most people what stress is, they generally give you examples of stressful situations in their lives, like tight money, death of a loved one, or having too much to do. While these are certainly stressful circumstances for some people, they are not stress itself. You want to combat stress to create a happy and healthy life, but how can you if you don’t even know what you are fighting? You can feel stress when it is happening (some of the time), but what exactly is it?
Stress is any physical, social, energetic, emotional, mental, or spiritual unbalance. All living things maintain health through balance. Scientists call this balance homeostasis. This balance is critical on every level of life. Your body needs balance – too much or too little of anything and everything in the body creates illness…too much heat/too little heat, too much water/too little water, too much food/too little food, and so on. Anything that creates an imbalance in the body is stressful to the body. Stress means cells die, inflammation sets in, and degeneration takes place. Everything that stresses you kills you little by little.
Physical stress relates to everything from poisons and toxins that unbalance our body functions to too much or too little exercise. Blood sugar problems from over-consumption of sugars is currently one of the biggest physical stressors, as well as simple over-consumption of food in general. Traumatic injuries seriously disrupt the internal balance of body functions. Our whole modern lifestyle unbalances our hormones, neurotransmitters, and immune systems.
Social stress has to do with the balance between people’s needs. There must always be an even exchange between people to produce a healthy society with healthy people. Greedy people create stress. Needy non-productive people create stress. Anyone who wants to get something for nothing generates illness within a society. The only sustainable healthy relationships within a society are those that are win-win in which all parties get their needs met in a mutually beneficial exchange. Fortunately, everyone’s needs are different (as are their strengths, skills, and gifts) so exchange can take place. This is the basis of society – exchange.
Energetic stress concerns information and communication processing within the human body. These can be thrown out of balance by such things as electro-magnetic pollution, radiation, excess sound or other sense stimulation, and even lack of natural light. Very subtle imbalances – such as visual balance in the environment, lack of aesthetic stimulation, or even shared community stress – can throw your inner body communication out of balance.
Emotional stress is a huge area. Most of it comes from the lack of good skills for relating to life. Without good reality based skills, life events and interactions unbalance us. Usually our lack of skills is because we have gotten stuck in the childhood thinking trap. As small children we developed a load of expectations, beliefs, and attitudes built out of a temporary special exception to the even- exchange rule of healthy human interactions (hence the feeling of specialness to childhood). Because children have little to give when young, they cannot engage in healthy exchange to get their needs met. As adults we cover for children by giving them what they need “for free” until they become old enough to participate appropriately. Unfortunately, by the time this happens 80% of their emotional coping skills have been formed based on this false social exchange. This problem has steadily gotten worse as we lengthen the number of years dedicated to childhood into the late teens and even the twenties. In times past you were working to help the family by age 7 and were out on your own by age 14. You learned early your value is in your participation.
Mental stress is much like emotional stress, except that it concerns mental processes – a different part of the brain. The old phrase ‘garbage in = garbage out’ pretty well describes the mental stress causes. Our brain is filled with garbage in the form of false beliefs, assumptions, faulty logic, inhibitions, and inappropriate habits of thinking (negative thinking).
A whole arena of mental/emotional stress hardly anyone is talking about has to do with how brain inflammation alters the mental and emotional parts of your brain function. Toxins and drugs from our lifestyle seriously unbalance our brain function so we can’t have healthy thoughts and feelings even if we want to. The brain is very sensitive to all kinds of stressors and we have to protect our brains by our lifestyle choices to stay healthy.
Finally, I will mention spiritual stressors. If your life has no personal meaning or purpose to you, all your body systems and brain decrease their function. If you are narcissistic and think other people should be the way you think they should be, the truth that you are not the center of the universe will constantly stress your internal sense of self. This actually causes brain damage. If you have no sense of connection and oneness with life, the separation causes retardation of various brain functions and ultimately generates disease within the body.
So as you can now see, stress is really very simple on one level. It is just anything that creates an imbalance within you. But the number of ways we can become unbalanced is huge. Everything inside of you is connected together. Any given symptom can come from almost any imbalance anywhere. Emotional traumas can cause cancer. Aluminum toxicity in the brain can cause loss of functioning of the muscles of your legs. Gut inflammation can cause brain fog, ADD or violent behavior. Excess blood sugar can cause food allergies, memory loss, or a fungus infection under your toenails.
Everything affects everything. Treating symptoms is comforting, but does nothing to address the stress behind the symptom that caused it. If you don’t address the stress and its causes, it will kill you a little more each day. With each little bit of death your ability to be happy and enjoy life decreases. Since the basic purpose of life is to learn and grow to be happy, I can think of nothing as basic or important as decreasing our stress. The pursuit of money, power, or fame serves you not at all if you loose the ability to enjoy life in the process. What good is security if you are unable to feel good. Without your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health, you have nothing.
Toward this end, Ellen and I are creating a Guided Stress Relief Program. While some steps can be self-engaged just through education guiding your lifestyle choices, most of the time the average person just does not know how to assess what the sources of their stress are. You can feel the symptoms and expressions of the stress, but this has nothing to do with the causes. Comforting the symptoms does not stop the on-going damage taking place. I will be conducting public lectures to educate you as well as writing on various topics in my newsletter. Ellen will be applying simple testing procedures to find the sources of stress and recommending treatment to remedy the problems. More complex problems may require lab work of various types. Our approach is, of course, to use natural methods to solve these stress patterns, but sometimes referral to specialists may be necessary. Our concern is whatever is best for your health.
Stress is any physical, social, energetic, emotional, mental, or spiritual unbalance. All living things maintain health through balance. Scientists call this balance homeostasis. This balance is critical on every level of life. Your body needs balance – too much or too little of anything and everything in the body creates illness…too much heat/too little heat, too much water/too little water, too much food/too little food, and so on. Anything that creates an imbalance in the body is stressful to the body. Stress means cells die, inflammation sets in, and degeneration takes place. Everything that stresses you kills you little by little.
Physical stress relates to everything from poisons and toxins that unbalance our body functions to too much or too little exercise. Blood sugar problems from over-consumption of sugars is currently one of the biggest physical stressors, as well as simple over-consumption of food in general. Traumatic injuries seriously disrupt the internal balance of body functions. Our whole modern lifestyle unbalances our hormones, neurotransmitters, and immune systems.
Social stress has to do with the balance between people’s needs. There must always be an even exchange between people to produce a healthy society with healthy people. Greedy people create stress. Needy non-productive people create stress. Anyone who wants to get something for nothing generates illness within a society. The only sustainable healthy relationships within a society are those that are win-win in which all parties get their needs met in a mutually beneficial exchange. Fortunately, everyone’s needs are different (as are their strengths, skills, and gifts) so exchange can take place. This is the basis of society – exchange.
Energetic stress concerns information and communication processing within the human body. These can be thrown out of balance by such things as electro-magnetic pollution, radiation, excess sound or other sense stimulation, and even lack of natural light. Very subtle imbalances – such as visual balance in the environment, lack of aesthetic stimulation, or even shared community stress – can throw your inner body communication out of balance.
Emotional stress is a huge area. Most of it comes from the lack of good skills for relating to life. Without good reality based skills, life events and interactions unbalance us. Usually our lack of skills is because we have gotten stuck in the childhood thinking trap. As small children we developed a load of expectations, beliefs, and attitudes built out of a temporary special exception to the even- exchange rule of healthy human interactions (hence the feeling of specialness to childhood). Because children have little to give when young, they cannot engage in healthy exchange to get their needs met. As adults we cover for children by giving them what they need “for free” until they become old enough to participate appropriately. Unfortunately, by the time this happens 80% of their emotional coping skills have been formed based on this false social exchange. This problem has steadily gotten worse as we lengthen the number of years dedicated to childhood into the late teens and even the twenties. In times past you were working to help the family by age 7 and were out on your own by age 14. You learned early your value is in your participation.
Mental stress is much like emotional stress, except that it concerns mental processes – a different part of the brain. The old phrase ‘garbage in = garbage out’ pretty well describes the mental stress causes. Our brain is filled with garbage in the form of false beliefs, assumptions, faulty logic, inhibitions, and inappropriate habits of thinking (negative thinking).
A whole arena of mental/emotional stress hardly anyone is talking about has to do with how brain inflammation alters the mental and emotional parts of your brain function. Toxins and drugs from our lifestyle seriously unbalance our brain function so we can’t have healthy thoughts and feelings even if we want to. The brain is very sensitive to all kinds of stressors and we have to protect our brains by our lifestyle choices to stay healthy.
Finally, I will mention spiritual stressors. If your life has no personal meaning or purpose to you, all your body systems and brain decrease their function. If you are narcissistic and think other people should be the way you think they should be, the truth that you are not the center of the universe will constantly stress your internal sense of self. This actually causes brain damage. If you have no sense of connection and oneness with life, the separation causes retardation of various brain functions and ultimately generates disease within the body.
So as you can now see, stress is really very simple on one level. It is just anything that creates an imbalance within you. But the number of ways we can become unbalanced is huge. Everything inside of you is connected together. Any given symptom can come from almost any imbalance anywhere. Emotional traumas can cause cancer. Aluminum toxicity in the brain can cause loss of functioning of the muscles of your legs. Gut inflammation can cause brain fog, ADD or violent behavior. Excess blood sugar can cause food allergies, memory loss, or a fungus infection under your toenails.
Everything affects everything. Treating symptoms is comforting, but does nothing to address the stress behind the symptom that caused it. If you don’t address the stress and its causes, it will kill you a little more each day. With each little bit of death your ability to be happy and enjoy life decreases. Since the basic purpose of life is to learn and grow to be happy, I can think of nothing as basic or important as decreasing our stress. The pursuit of money, power, or fame serves you not at all if you loose the ability to enjoy life in the process. What good is security if you are unable to feel good. Without your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health, you have nothing.
Toward this end, Ellen and I are creating a Guided Stress Relief Program. While some steps can be self-engaged just through education guiding your lifestyle choices, most of the time the average person just does not know how to assess what the sources of their stress are. You can feel the symptoms and expressions of the stress, but this has nothing to do with the causes. Comforting the symptoms does not stop the on-going damage taking place. I will be conducting public lectures to educate you as well as writing on various topics in my newsletter. Ellen will be applying simple testing procedures to find the sources of stress and recommending treatment to remedy the problems. More complex problems may require lab work of various types. Our approach is, of course, to use natural methods to solve these stress patterns, but sometimes referral to specialists may be necessary. Our concern is whatever is best for your health.
Here is part of the Neurotransmitter Assessment Form we use in the office (created by Dr. Datis Kharrazian) to measure the affect of stress on the brain. If you find any of these happening often or all the time it means there is significant brain degeneration taking place. Brain degeneration is one of the most serious problems that stress creates. As the brain gets inflamed and degenerates, chronic and hard to pin down problems start showing up all over the body because the brain controls everything.
- Is your memory noticeably declining?
- Are you having a hard time remembering names
and phone numbers? - Is your ability to focus noticeably declining?
- Has it become harder for you to learn things?
- How often do you have a hard time remembering
your appointments? - Is your temperament getting worse in general?
- Are you losing your attention span endurance?
- How often do you find yourself down or sad?
- How often do you fatigue when driving compared
to the past? - How often do you fatigue when reading compared
to the past? - How often do you walk into rooms and forget why?
- How often do you pick up your cell phone and forget why?
I don’t know about you, but some of those questions apply to me far too often. Personally I am loading up on specific nutrients to protect what brain cells I have left. There are a lot of very case specific nutrients, but the general nutrients for anyone answering yes to any of those questions are: Phosphatidyl serene in a trans-dermal cream (because it is not absorbed through the gut)(Adrena Calm), alpha-lipoic acid, Vitamin D3, and Methyl donors like methyl cobalamin (a type of B12), folic acid, DMAE, SAM-e, and foods like onions, garlic, and beets. Additionally I use a powerful Glutathione/CoQ10 cream (Oxycell) as an anti-oxidant in addition to blueberries, pomagranate, and dark chocolate to reduce inflammation.
I work on my emotional/mental/spiritual stress with Gracework and Heartflow in addition to finding time to just relax and enjoy life. I have to get away from the “always doing” mind set now and then. I walk and go to the gym to move out the physical stress as well as get a Chiropractic adjustment every week and regular massages. I keep my brain stimulated by always learning new things.
That may seem like a lot of stuff, but like I expressed in the last newsletter, if my brain is not working then nothing else in my life matters. If I can’t remember who I am or who I love then what else is there?
So there is hope of stopping much of the damage and even reversing some of the dysfunction. I will take all I can get. It is a quality of life issue.
Just a counterpoint thought – not all stress is bad. The only way to stay always balanced is to always stay the same. Movement is the process of shifting from a state of unbalance to balance – back and forth. Walking is a good example. To walk you start from a balanced stance and propel yourself forward with one leg while lifting the other – a very unbalanced activity. But you have the skill to catch your “fall” with the raised leg now moved forward. Life works this same way. You advance and grow in life by taking risks and overcoming challenges to your balance. You have to develop steadily increasing skills to keep up with the challenges and risks. As you succeed you grow. If you fail to develop the necessary skill or take a risk that has no positive outcome possible then you become unbalanced and inflammation, illness, and decay result. Life is constantly changing so our constant movement and adaptation is required. Staying the same by being stubborn and unchanging in a moving world will automatically generate unbalancing conflicts for you. So basically you have the choice of either risking change and possibly succeeding or standing still and being run over for sure. Health is a state of dynamic balance – the constant movement between taking in the new, adapting to it and using it, and letting go of the old…like breathing…like eating…like life.