TURNING DOWN ADRENALINE: GOOD STRESS
Stress can be good for you. Your body is designed for it, ami a bit of stress here and there is excellent for your system.
If you can get stressed and recover, you’re doing well. But if you constantly feel stressed, and the stress lasts for months or years, it can be bad for you. Stress is all about control – either feeling out of control or actually being out of control.
Surviving a stressful situation can leave you with a sense of mastery. It can also give you confidence in your ability to handle stress in future. Mentally and physically, this is good for you. But when stress is prolonged and you are subjugated to it without having any control over the factors that produce it, it begins to take its toll.
Long-term stress is an underlying factor in many common ailments that traditional Western medicine has difficulty treating. It is known to compromise immunity, making the person susceptible to illness.
Consider the ‘seed and soil’ concept of health: in this analogy, the seed is the infectious agent and the soil is the body. When people are sick, they and their doctors usually focus on the seed without looking at what has weakened the soil and made it so vulnerable to attack.
In times of stress, the body produces a cocktail of hormones, the most potent of which is adrenaline. In short bursts adrenaline is productive. But when it is constantly produced because of ongoing stress, it becomes destructive.
Some doctors believe being over-adrenalised is an insidious Western condition and that people with adrenaline overload are not being identified because there is no time to make the diagnosis and no simple blood lest for adrenaline.
When threatened, the body automatically has a flight-or light response. It produces adrenaline to speed up the heart, increase breathing and tighten the muscles. In addition, other senses are heightened and the pupils dilate to let in more light. Essentially, this reaction is a short-term response to danger. The nervous system is designed to cope with it and, to a degree, needs the challenge and stimulation it provides.
Humans seem to be the only animals that learn to handle situations in a way that effectively makes them feel they are ‘out of control’. They are taught to rationalise and override natural instincts that cause other animals to flee or light. The human brain doesn’t appear to differentiate between real life-threatening loss of control and learnt loss of control – it just produces adrenaline in response to a threatening situation. And it is this chronic adrenaline overload that compromises the body’s function.
Learnt loss of control is typical in the workplace among people who don’t fee! they have charge of their situation. The renowned Whitehall study of 10 000 British civil servants found a dramatic difference in disease from those at the top of the hierarchy to those at the bottom. Those at the top, who wore black bowler hats and would retire with a knighthood, had four times less disease than those at the bottom, who ran messages and cleaned the place.
While that was not surprising – because social class is a known predictor of health – what was surprising was the gradient. Those professionals and executives on rung two had rates twice as high as those on rung one.
Alter excluding other (actors, commentators put (his dramatic increase down to ‘control of destiny’. While top dogs could influence events that impinged on their lives, those immediately below them had no such latitude and had little opportunity to decide how to do their work.
Over years in practice, Dr David Isaacs – a Sydney doctor, and author of The Stress Solution – has identified four common pal-terns that arc interpreted by the brain as being evidence that it is out of control and digger the adrenaline response.
The first is trying to control the uncontrollable: ‘If we give others the power lo control us, and they disappoint or frustrate us, the brain appears to interpret this as a threat and produces adrenaline.’
The second is giving up control when we actually have it: ‘When we arc not assertive (saying “yes” when we mean “no”) the brain interprets this as being out of control and produces adrenaline.’ Overwork, boredom, frustration and general insecurity fit into this category.
Third is unresolved grief. This grief can come from a death or a significant loss, such as divorce or retrenchment. Isaacs says the death of others engenders thoughts of mortality and is perceived by the brain as a threat. This tendency gets worse with age.
Fourth is unresolved trauma from the past. This can lead to the cumulative release of adrenaline.
The best way to escape the downward spiral into disease is to get up and reduce adrenaline levels by taking some control of your life.
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