How to Improve Your Health By Freeing Yourself from Stress
April 25, 2013
Story at-a-glance
Research has linked emotional stress to a wide variety of
health problems, including physical pain, chronic
inflammation, stillbirths, lowered immune function,
increased blood pressure, altered brain chemistry, increased
tumor growth and more
Ruminating on a stressful incident can increase your levels
of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation in your
body. Increasingly, chronic inflammation is being associated
with various disorders and conditions
According to a recent survey, work topped the list as the
most stressful factor in people's lives, followed by
financial problems and poor health
While you cannot eliminate stress entirely, energy
psychology tools such as the Emotional Freedom Technique
(EFT) can help your body compensate for the bioelectrical
short-circuiting that can disrupt many of your body's
important systems, thereby causing disease
The connections between stress and physical health are being
explored at greater frequency these days. For example, recent
news items have reported the links between emotional distress
and physical pain,1
chronic inflammation2
and even stillbirths.3
In fact, pregnant women who experience significant stress in
the months prior to, or during pregnancy are more likely to
deliver stillborn babies. The risk is heightened with each
stressful event, such as moving, losing a job, or the death of a
friend or family member.
Previous studies have linked stress to
lowered immune system function; increased blood pressure and
cholesterol levels; altered brain chemistry, blood sugar levels
and hormonal balance. It has also been found to increase the
rate at which tumors grow.4
In a poll, work was identified as the number one
source of stress in people’s lives.
Clearly, it is not possible or even recommended to eliminate
stress entirely. However you can work to provide your
body with tools to compensate for the bioelectrical
short-circuiting that can cause serious disruption in many of
your body's important systems.
By using techniques such as the
Emotional
Freedom Technique (EFT), you can reprogram your body’s
reactions to the unavoidable stressors of everyday life.
Exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, and meditation are
also important “release valves” that can help you manage your
stress.
How Stress Causes Disease
When you're stressed, your body releases stress hormones like
cortisol, which prepare your body to fight or flee the stressful
event. Your heart rate increases, your lungs take in more
oxygen, your blood flow increases and parts of your immune
system become temporarily suppressed, which reduces your
inflammatory response to pathogens and other foreign invaders.
When stress becomes chronic, however, your immune system
becomes less sensitive to cortisol, and since inflammation is
partly regulated by this hormone, this decreased sensitivity
heightens the inflammatory response and allows inflammation
to get out of control.
This is in large part how stress “predisposes” you to getting
sick in the first place. And, in the event you do get sick,
emotional stressors can make your symptoms worse. Because
inflammation plays a role in most diseases, including
cardiovascular disease, asthma and autoimmune disorders, this
model suggests why stress impacts them as well.
Links Explored Between Physical and Emotional Pain Relief
According to two recent studies from the Association for
Psychological Science, physical pain may be a natural mechanism
to help you regulate your emotions. This concept was explored by
investigating a phenomenon known as “pain offset relief,” in
which you experience the emotion of relief when the physical
pain is removed.
In the first study,5
the researchers recorded participants’ emotions via electrodes
in response to loud noises delivered either alone or seconds
after receiving a low- or high-intensity electric shock. After
pain offset, participants showed increased positive emotions and
decreased negative emotions. The greater the pain (i.e.
intensity of the shock), the greater the increase in
positive emotions once the pain stopped. According to the
authors, these findings shed light on the emotional nature of
pain offset relief.
However, while the authors speculated that this might help us
understand why some people seek relief through self-injurious
behavior, a second study6
refuted the idea that those who harm themselves in an effort to
experience relief do so because they experience greater
levels of relief once the pain is removed than others. According
to the featured article:7
“Surprisingly, healthy individuals displayed pain
offset relief levels that were comparable to those of
individuals with a history of self-harm, and there was no
correlation between pain offset relief and self-harm
frequency. These results do not support the hypothesis that
heightened pain offset relief is a risk factor for future
self-injury. Instead... the biggest risk factors for
nonsuicidal self-injury may concern how some people overcome
the instinctive barriers that keep most people from
inflicting self-harm.”
Dwelling on Stressful Events Can Increase Inflammation in Your
Body
Related research presented at the annual meeting of the
American Psychosomatic Society in Miami, Florida, found that
ruminating on a stressful incident can increase your levels of
C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation in your body.8
It was the first study to directly measure this effect.
To do so, they asked 34 healthy young women to give a speech
about her candidacy for a job in front of two stone-faced
interviewers wearing white lab coats. Afterward, half the group
was asked to contemplate their performance while the other half
were asked to think about neutral things like going to the
grocery store. Blood samples were drawn from each participant,
showing that the C-reactive protein levels were significantly
higher in those who kept ruminating on their speech. According
to Medical News Today:9
“For these participants, the levels of the
inflammatory marker continued to rise for at least one hour
after the speech. During the same time period, the marker
returned to starting levels in the subjects who had been
asked to focus on other thoughts.
The C-reactive protein is primarily produced by the
liver as part of the immune system's initial inflammatory
response. It rises in response to traumas, injuries or
infections in the body, [lead author, Peggy] Zoccola
explained. C-reative protein is widely used as a clinical
marker to determine if a patient has an infection, but also
if he or she may be at risk for disease later in life. 'More
and more, chronic inflammation is being associated with
various disorders and conditions,' Zoccola said. 'The immune
system plays an important role in various cardiovascular
disorders such as heart disease, as well as cancer, dementia
and autoimmune diseases.'"
Work is the Primary Cause of Stress in People's Lives
So what’s keeping your mind running in circles? According to
a recent survey of more than 2,000 people, work topped the list
as the most stressful factor in people's lives.
34 percent of respondents reported that their work life
was either “very” or “quite” stressful
30 percent cited debt or financial problems as the most
stressful factor, and
17 percent cited health problems as their main source of
stress
Workplace stress resulted in seven percent of adults having
suicidal thoughts. That figure was even higher among 18-24-year
olds — as many as 10 percent in this age group have had suicidal
thoughts as a result of work stress. One in five people also
reported developing anxiety due to work-related stresses, and
even more disturbingly, nearly 60 percent reported using alcohol
after work to cope. Fourteen percent also said they drank
during the work day to deal with the pressure!
Other destructive coping mechanisms cited included:
Smoking (28 percent)
Taking antidepressants (15 percent)
Over-the-counter and prescription sleeping pills (16 and
10 percent respectively)
The cost associated with all this stress goes beyond that of
an individual’s health. It’s also costly to employers. Stress-related
health expenses, productivity losses and the costs associated
with high employee turnover rates is currently costing American
companies an estimated $360 billion each year.10
And while more than half of managers (56 percent) polled said
they’d like to do more to improve the mental health of their
staff, they said they needed more training, and 46 percent said
mental health was not a priority in their organization so they
couldn’t do anything about it even though they wanted to.
For examples on how you can increase wellness at work,
whether you’re an employee or a manager, please see my recent
article "Why
Wellness in the Workplace Matters." Chief Executive of Mind,
Paul Farmer told Medical News Today:11
"Work related mental health problems are an issue too
important for businesses to ignore. Our research shows that
employees are still experiencing high levels of stress at
work, which is negatively impacting their physical and
mental health. We know that right now, one in six workers is
experiencing depression, stress or anxiety and yet our
survey tells us that most managers don't feel they have had
enough training or guidance to support them.
Improving mental well being in the workplace doesn't
have to cost a lot. Our research shows that people whose
organizations offered flexible working hours and generous
annual leave said such measures supported their mental well
being. Three in five people said that if their employer took
action to support the mental well being of all staff, they
would feel more loyal, motivated, committed and be likely to
recommend their workplace as a good place to work."
EFT — Your Best Defense Against Anxiety and Stress
Even the conservative Center for Disease Control (CDC)
reports that 85 percent of all disease has an emotional element.
Stress and anxiety are two prevalent reasons why many people
acquire health problems ranging from ulcers to sleeping problems
to depression and more serious chronic ailments.
Many, if not most people carry emotional scars -- traumas
that can adversely affect your health. Chronic stress is akin to
emotional scarring, and causes ongoing damage to your cells.
According to cellular biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton, the true
secret to life does not lie within your DNA, but rather within
the mechanisms of your cell membrane. Each cell membrane has
receptors that pick up various environmental signals — which
includes your thoughts and emotional state — and this mechanism
controls the "reading" of the genes inside your cells. Your
cells can choose to read or not read the genetic blueprint
depending on the signals being received from the environment.
This is what is now known as epigenetic control, i.e. the
environment within your body — including your emotional terrain
— controls your genetic expression, not the other way
around.
Using techniques like energy psychology, you can correct the
emotional short circuiting that contributes to your chronic
stress. My favorite technique for this is the
Emotional
Freedom Technique (EFT), which is the largest and most
popular version of energy psychology.
EFT was developed in the 1990s by Gary Craig, a Stanford
engineering graduate specializing in healing and
self-improvement. It’s akin to acupuncture, which is based on
the concept that a vital energy flows through your body along
invisible pathways known as meridians. EFT stimulates different
energy meridian points in your body by tapping them with your
fingertips, while simultaneously using custom-made verbal
affirmations. This can be done alone or under the supervision of
a qualified therapist.12
By doing so, you help your body eliminate emotional “scarring”
and reprogram the way your body responds to emotional stressors.
Since these stressors are usually connected to physical
problems, many people’s diseases and other symptoms can improve
or disappear as well.
For a demonstration of how to perform EFT, please see the
following video featuring EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman. The
first video is a general demonstration, which can be tailored to
just about any problem, and the second demonstrates how to tap
for depression. While this technique is particularly effective
for relieving emotional or mental stress and anxiety, it can be
used for all manner of physical pain relief as well.
Total Video Length: 29:22
While the video above will easily teach you how to do EFT, it
is VERY important to realize that self-treatment for serious
issues is NOT recommended. It can be dangerous because it will
allow you to falsely conclude that EFT does not work when
nothing could be further from the truth. For serious or complex
issues, you need someone to guide you through the process as
there is an incredible art to this process and it typically
takes years of training to develop the skill to tap on
deep-seated, significant issues.
For Optimal Health, Take Stress Management Seriously
As much as you may try to ignore it, you cannot separate your
wellness from your emotions. Every feeling you have affects some
part of your body, and stress can wreak havoc on your physical
health even if you’re doing everything else “right.”
The classic definition of stress is “any real or imagined
threat, and your body’s response to it.” Celebrations and
tragedies alike can cause a stress response in your body. All of
your feelings, positive or negative, create physiological
changes. Your skin, heart rate, digestion, joints, muscle energy
levels, the hair on your head, and countless cells and systems
you don't even know about change with every emotion.
You cannot eliminate stress entirely, but there are tools
available to help your body compensate for the bioelectrical
short-circuiting caused by stress that is the root of so much
illness and poor health. Exercising regularly, getting enough
sleep, and meditation are also important “release valves” that
can help you manage your stress.
The beauty about energy psychology techniques such as the
Emotional
Freedom Technique (EFT) is that it can reprogram
your body’s reactions to the unavoidable stressors of everyday
life, thereby providing a more lasting effect. While it’s easy
to do on your own, it’s advisable to seek the help of a licensed
therapist13
if you’re dealing with trauma-based stress such as PTSD or grief
following the loss of a loved one.