How To De-stress In Distress
Smarter than a computer. Never a Pavlov’s dog.
This piece is the third of a number of stand-alone DESTINY postings on how to rise above and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic by shaping up to be healthy, fit, tough and wise. It is based on the author’s multi-decade insights as a cardiologist and founder in a non-profit lifestyle coaching program completed by thousands of patients and coworkers. All the advice comes from participants’ real-life experiences, state-of-the-art science and diverse time-honored wisdom.
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Tak Poon, MD September 2, 2020. 7 min read.
P articularly in these difficult times, we cannot avoid stress. But we can avert it by well-practiced resilience.
For 25 years, over 2,000 graduates from my lifestyle coaching program told me why they had been overweight, unwell, and generally unhappy before. In their experience, the core cause is stress in daily life.
Under stress, many people seek comfort from food and find no motivation to exercise. Others try to suppress the symptoms with diets and denial. To solve this big problem for good, we must uproot the cause. So, let’s tackle stress.
Extensive research on stress reveals that external events are not the culprit. Many “stressors” are truly stressful, yet the majority of such ‘hot buttons’ are just neutral, like traffic signals. It’s our negative internal response that leads to real-life stress and disease (dis-ease).
We can defuse it at the junction box where outer stressors get converted into inner stress: the MIND. Once properly primed, its safety flip switch can protect us from flipping out.
Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov’s dogs salivated to the bell even when there was no more food. This conditioned (i.e. tricked) reflex of the central nervous system is like a knee-jerk.
But our human mind is a central processing unit more intelligent than even an Intel® CPU. If we de-condition that nervous reflex, we won’t keep getting tricked into kneeing the wrong jerk.
Most stressors are ‘hot buttons’ like that dog bell—Rrrr. Because they get pushed repeatedly, you can be prepared.
Between rings, you can regroup, reprocess, reset and rehearse your reactions so you are ready to repress your former reflex when they restrike—Rrrrrrrrrring right back at them.
You have survived the pandemic. Humans are a species distinguished at dealing with disasters in real-life. It’s those phantom problems in our heads that become interminable tyrants and terrorists.
Ask yourself, “What the ‘f’ is really going on?” i.e. are your frightening foes factually flocking in your face or just fictionally flashing in your fantasy? After listing both facts and fears and lining them up, you’ll likely lay back and LOL with relief.
Once you have the awareness and do some reprogramming, you won’t keep getting knee jerked. It is humanly possible for us to win the “No-bell” Prize.
. . .
FOCUS
Prepare for the worst, then quit worrying. You’ve readied yourself already. Now chill.
Urgent matters need focus and fast pace. Critical matters need your head cool, clear and collected. Stress messes up all manners of matters. That’s why how you manage stress matters most.
. . .
With practice, just a few breath cycles can instantly deliver a direct disruption from distress.
. . .
Identify your worst stress triggers (stressors) and make 2 parallel lists. One is how it actually is in real life, the other is how you assume it to be in your head.
Now look at the factual list. Still don’t like it? Then fix it. Can’t make it better? Then just make yourself better. Can’t change it all? Then change what you can – your mind.
NUTRITION
It’s super easy to scan food labels. Always start with the SERVING SIZE on top. If you eat the whole box with 10 servings, multiply all the (comfortably low) numbers by 10, including calories. A medium size person consumes about 2,000 calories a day. More on the other items soon.
ACTIVITY
Morph your 10,000 steps/day into no-brainer routines. For example: take the stairs, bike to the store, park a block or two farther, get off one or two bus stops earlier, go around COVID-risky spots, step on/off a box at screen time… And don’t just sit there (for too long).
HEALTH MATTERS
Instant stress is fueled by an Adrenaline squirt built into our system to avert danger, like from a tiger. This fight-or-flight response fizzles out once the threat is past. We need this hard-wired function for survival.
Adrenaline storms strike because of how we react to stressors we perceive as tigers in daily life. Tigers or pussycats, the resulting runaway Adrenaline overrun is a recipe for heart attack or stroke, at least a very bad hair day.Lingering or recurring stress steeps you in Cortisol, a hormone the body makes only for short-term relief of inflammation. If it gets cranked up for days to months on end, this steroid acts like a slow poison causing a host of nasty chronic disorders, including obesity, and a higher risk of dying from COVID-19.
In this fast-paced world, some things must be rushed. But not all things.
People afflicted with “Hurry Sickness” hurry, worry and scurry just about everything until they get sick with “dis-ease”.
It’s worth a quick pause to sort out if this and that call for haste, waste or a slower pace.
TAKEAWAYS
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others,” said Marcus Cicero. In gratitude for your readership, may I offer you this weekly podcast preview for free. Enjoy, all at once or, better yet, one day at a time (2-3 minutes).
Good Night Podcast (Gratitude)
Every week we explore a different topic of dreamy, wondrous and miraculous realities usually not on people’s mind because they are often taken for granted, neglected, even ignored by our mind.
1. Thank your body
4. Metabolism - making good and breaking bad
2. Thank everybody
5. Utilities –plumbing, electrical, ventilation
7. Do you mind? Thanks!
3. How moving
6. Genes and Jeans
WRITTEN BY
Doc Tak
Tak C. Poon, MD, PharmD, ABIHM, FACC
Board-certified American Preventive Cardiologist now developer of a wellness blog and a lifestyle habit-forming app at www.metacardio.org
Readers’ Out-of-Sight Insights:
I would love to post any valuable ideas or teachable moments you might want to share in this Destiny series.