Maintaining Your Health on Mackinac
Acceptance and Understanding Challenges Are Key in Handling Stress
By Yvan Silva, M.D.

Stress. It seems to lurk in the background of our lives, coloring our accomplishments and our failures, influencing our mentalities, anxieties, and dream patterns. Everybody experiences some degree of stress, and some stress may be unavoidable. To find the ways to cope with stress, one must begin with acceptance and understanding the challenges. Just what is stress?

The term was first coined by the famous scientist Professor Hans Selye, who described acute stress as a "fight or flight" phenomenon. He found that when threatened, animals would survive their predators by one of these two responses, and at the time of attack, the output of adrenaline into their bloodstreams would increase more than 40-fold, providing huge amounts of energy for the required physical response.

In the 1980s, the term "stress" emerged as a buzzword in everyday conversations, replacing common terms such as worry, impatience, fear, anger, and leading to "stressedout," which means offering stress-related bases for poor performance or adverse events in daily living and, indeed, naming it as a causative factor in a variety of illnesses.

Our brains have developed mechanisms for handling stress and stressful situations, during which stress hormones, adrenaline, and cortisol can spike or get slowed down and cause symptoms. Accepting, learning how to cope, and dealing with stress are essential, and there is growing evidence of the harmful effects of long-term stress. The fastest-growing claims for insurance benefits in the disability category are for stress, job burnout, and depression. Denial of the biological need, and a lack of effort to deal with stress, seem to be the common denominator.

Late last year, a national survey showed that people tend to cope with stress in all the wrong ways - "relaxing" by watching television, skipping exercise, and eating unhealthy foods. In reality, buffering stress is easier with exercise, relaxing with friends and family, and finding things to do that bring personal satisfaction. Two decades ago, stress was thought to be caused by excessive workloads or lack of control on the job. Recent studies in the workplace have shown that a mismatch in the values of companies and their employees, and unfairness, are more causative.

Stress is often recognized by the ways people respond to demands. A practical definition: When the problems presented by everyday life exceed your resources for coping with them, you feel stressed. Recent psychological studies have defined people who respond to demanding situations by losing their sense of well-being and then develop chronic illnesses.

For example, in a comparison of coping styles of students with the most and the fewest episodes of illness during a given period, one study showed that those who reported little illness tended to maintain reasonable personal control in their lives. If a problem came up, they would look for resources, or try out potential solutions. People who approached problems passively tended to be ill more frequently. Goal-oriented individuals did better, such as completing a career, participating in community activity, or engaging in a hobby; setting goals in physical fitness and maintaining a disciplined regimen of exercising was an excellent incentive.

Certain choices in lifestyle clearly enhance the ability to cope with stress. Minimum use of "substances" regarded as drugs or drug-like, such as nicotine and caffeine, reflects the "take charge" attitude associated with coping. People who are most vulnerable to stress are most likely to complain they don't have time to relax, and tend to be more socially isolated. People who deal well with stress tend to associate with other people who are active, and have positive attitudes.

In a study of a large group of individuals, 80% of a low-illness group engaged in regular aerobic exercise, whereas only 20% of the vulnerable group did so.

There are several ways that exercise can ease stress. According to the American Council on Exercise, anxiety is diminished following exercise and the electrical impulses measured in muscles decrease; one exercise session generates as much as 90 to 120 minutes of relaxation response, often described as a post-exercise high. Exercise makes you feel better about yourself, and selfworth contributes to stress relief.

Surely, certain jobs are associated with higher degrees of stress than others, and certain lifestyles predispose to compromising good health. It is now becoming clear that stressresistance can be pursued successfully by problem-solving approaches to unpleasant situations, healthy social bonding, dedicated time for relaxation, and maintenance of a regular physical exercise regimen.

There are several ways to relieve stress after the allimportant step of accepting that stress cannot be avoided. This is the first lesson, because when stress overwhelms the system, choices seem to be limited. Although some stress may be unavoidable, the development of certain habits and methods can help minimize the effects.

Learning to breathe deeply, and doing so at appropriate times and intervals, is very beneficial. There is a biological interplay between the heart and lungs. When you take a deep breath to fill your lungs and exhale slowly, the brain sends a signal to the heart and it slows down a bit. This is a classic technique used in yoga and meditation and is an excellent way to take control of your body. Regular, slowed breathing alerts your brain and relaxes your heart muscle, lowers your blood pressure, and clears your mind. Deep breathing exercises during acute stressful situations, and also on a daily basis, can be most helpful in the overall approach to stress management.

Regular exercise protects the heart, which is the first to be affected by stress. Exercise and regulated breathing is said to maintain the ability of the brain to think sharply. Aproper diet is becoming more and more an important factor in the approach to good health. There are positive effects of antioxidants and other ingredients that are abundant in fruits and vegetables. Lack of sleep increases the effects of stress on the body. Social isolation contributes to the physiological side effects of stress. Close friendships and the sharing of feelings and concerns help to alleviate the effects of stress.

There is a significant benefit to breaking up the routine by taking a vacation. This helps to clear, and more importantly put in perspective, matters that seem to be of greater concern than they really are. Overall, finding a sense of mission, or a passion for something that is personally enjoyed, makes it easier to deal with the setbacks posed by routine responsibilities. If this doesn't occur intrinsically with the job, it can be found in a hobby, volunteerism, or in community activities.

Stress can and will produce untoward physiological effects, and these can become chronic. It's important not to ignore the risks. It appears that there are opportunities to reverse the effects of chronic stress on the mind and body. Identify the causes and actively pursue methods to counteract stress.

Dr. Silva is a professor of surgery at Wayne State University and a resident of Woodbluff on Mackinac Island.