Integrative Medicine Part V - Busting Stress

Stress is with us all the time. Issues at work or at home, getting a traffic ticket, the grocery store out of your favorite yogurt. Life has stresses. We can go to the doctor and ask for a pill or we can learn to deal with our stresses effectively without much medication. 

Acute stress is normal and can even be lifesaving – seeing a truck barreling down the road at us. But when stress is chronic it becomes a major cause of ill health.  

Chronic stress builds up when the demands upon us become greater than our resources to respond in an effective manner. Stress tends to become cumulative. You can handle the first stressor and even the second, but when the third one occurs, even if it was rather minor, it tips over your balance point. Since we cannot completely escape stress, our agenda must be to boost our resources – to “fill up our cup” as Delia Chiaramonte, MD of the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine liked to term it during her “Busting Stress” workshop at the Center’s recent Health and Wellness Conference held in Baltimore, MD.  

Integrative medicine does not avoid traditional “western” medical approaches such as medications. But it does look at the whole person to determine if there are other parts to the “prescription” that might be equally or even more valuable. The agenda is to maintain health and further develop wellness.

There are external and internal sources of stress. Our boss ignored our hard work or disparaged our report – these are obvious external stresses. If they become too much it may be best to just look elsewhere for a new job and escape the situation.  

But other stresses are internally mediated. We might convert an event into a thought that in turn leads to a negative feeling that in turn causes stress. Imagine that a loved one is late to get home and has not called. That is the event. The thoughts can be quite different. One thought might be that he was in an accident resulting in a stressful feeling of anxiety. Or perhaps this event leads to the thought that he is having an affair – leading to a feeling of hurt. Or perhaps the thought is that he just didn’t care that he was late and didn’t bother to call – leading to a feeling of anger. Perhaps more likely he is just stuck in bad traffic and doesn’t have his cell phone with him – in that case you might have a feeling compassion. The three stressful feelings came from your thought interpretation of the event. The question you need to ask yourself is what is the likelihood of any of these thoughts being correct?  

You need to restore rationale thinking. Do this by labeling the irrational thought and then refute it with a new thought like “I have no evidence of an accident; he is probably just stuck in traffic.” Then detach yourself from the thought with the recognition that “this is an anxious thought, not a rational thought.” Finally, do something to distract yourself like playing with the kids.

To “fill up your cup” Dr Chiaramonte suggests considering these approaches. Begin a “gratitude ritual.” This means to take a time each day for gratitude perhaps while falling asleep or perhaps at dinner time. Think about what is good in life – today – maybe a spring flower, a smile from your loved one, the bright eyes of your child. It can’t be a rote thought however. Make it different every day. Amazingly enough, it works. It will increase your happiness and correlates well with general health and well being. 

Here is a line from the song “Counting My Blessings” sung by Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney in the movie “White Christmas.” "When my bank roll is gettin' small, I think of when I had none at all, and I fall asleep counting my blessings..." This is the concept of gratitude. 

A second approach is to aggressively try to be a “benefit finder” rather than a “fault finder.” It’s an approach in which you rethink and with doing so decrease your emotional reactions. Instead of the thought, “I have a vision problem that limits me” you might instead think of, “I still have one good eye and the world looks good to me.” 

Sleep is important. You feel more stressed if you are sleep deprived. Most of us get too little sleep. Fill your resource cup with added sleep. And the gratitude ritual at bed time will help you sleep more soundly.  

Food is equally as important. Things to avoid are processed foods with high levels of carbohydrates and fats (of course, these are the ones that taste so good to us!) like doughnuts, macaroni and cheese or pizza. Instead get more high quality proteins and skip the refined sugars as in sodas.  

And add in some exercise. Just moderately paced walking each day will not only decrease your stress but will improve your cardiovascular health, bone health and overall add to your sense of wellness.  

This may sound like a lot of effort. Actually it’s really not. It doesn’t take much time; it improves your physical health; and it will allow you to cope much better with stress. Better to “fill your cup” than rely on an anti-anxiety medication. 

Note: You can find the Center for Integrative Medicine on Facebook at http://on.fb.me/HWRPKp . And you can learn more about improving your health while reducing your costs in my book The Future of Health Care Delivery- Why It Must Change and How It Will Affect You