Breaking the Emotional Health Barriers

By Dr Reuben Phiri

In a concise form, devoid of academic rhetoric, this book describes how our emotions lead to common everyday illnesses. In todays family medicine clinics a large proportion of patients are presenting with such obvious emotional issues as depression, anxiety, panic attacks. This book seeks to show how other not so obviously emotional disease such high blood pressure, diabetes, strokes, heart attacks , obesity among other illnesses are emotional issues. For instance did you know that weight loss is almost always virtually impossible if the emotional issues surrounding obesity are not addressed? Now you will know why most diets fail to get rid of that excess flab. By reading this book it is hoped you will see this connection between your emotions and disease.

The book seeks to show you in easy to understand language how you can take charge of your emotions and lead a healthier life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Sep 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452504902

Dr Reuben Phiri

Reuben Phiri is a practicing family physician base in Melbourne, Australia. His work with sick people over three decades coupled with an interest in holistic medicine and science of mind have led to a keen understanding of the association between our state of mind (which determines our emotions) and our state of health.

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Copyright © 2012 Reuben Phiri

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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Balboa Press rev. date: 09/07/2012

Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE      EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

CHAPTER TWO      PHYSIOLOGY OF STRESS

CHAPTER THREE      THE BASICS OF

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

CHAPTER FOUR      EMOTIONAL HIJACKING

CHAPTER FIVE      ANGER

CHAPTER SIX      EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

IN THE WORKPLACE

CHAPTER SEVEN      GETTING YOUR KIDS

TO LOVE SCHOOL

CHAPTER EIGHT      WORK RELATED STRESS

AND BULLYING

CHAPTER NINE      OBSESSIONS,

WORRY AND FEAR

CHAPTER TEN      ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION

CHAPTER ELEVEN      THE AMAZING POWER

OF SUGGESTION

CHAPTER TWELVE      POST-TRAUMATIC

STRESS DISORDER

CHAPTER THIRTEEN      EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

IN RELATIONSHIPS

CHAPTER FOURTEEN      THE POWER OF GRATITUDE

CHAPTER FIFTEEN      AMAZING SEX

CHAPTER SIXTEEN      THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN      THE FIGHT AGAINST THE BULGE

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN      THE AMAZING POWER OF IMAGINATION

CHAPTER NINETEEN      THE AMAZING POWER OF

THE SUBCONSCIOUS BRAIN

CHAPTER TWENTY      THE AMAZING POWER

OF ATTITUDE

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE      THE AMAZING POWER

OF EMOTIONS

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO      CONCLUSION; AMAZING YOU

THE AUTHOR

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For my wife, Becky,

and my children Hugh, Michelle and Phillipa

You can set yourself up to be sick,

or you can choose to stay well.

Wayne Dyer

(American psychotherapist, author and lecturer).

PREFACE

In almost three decades of work I have had to deal with people with different types of illnesses and was initially frustrated at how difficult helping them appeared to be using the conventional wisdom of making a diagnosis and then prescribing a pill. Many years ago I started working more on finding out what really made my clients sick as opposed to just making a diagnosis. I did this mainly by conducting extensive interviews with many people. I quickly realised that often the headache that a person came in with was a symptom of an emotionally stressing issue. These stressors appeared to arise from mainly the home environment or social life, work, sex life or spiritual life.

In my younger years I had the privilege of being apprenticed to my grandfather who was a traditional healer in African medicine. He used to say this about the cause of illness. Sickness is caused by the patient’s dysfunctional or upset spirit. If the spirit is dysfunctional or upset it will cause bad thoughts, which in turn cause bad emotions, which lead to a sick body. Sickness is a symptom. The cure is to fix the spirit. As a result most of his therapies were all about appeasing the spirit to encourage a sense of peace and security in the patient. In turn this led to a return to good health.

I pondered this approach to illness. After reading Dr Murray’s book The Power of the Subconscious Mind I concluded that in the western context the spirit is the subconcious mind. This causes bad thoughts when it is dysfunctional. In turn the thoughts cause dysfunctional behaviour and stressful emotions.

Stress has been shown to be a major cause of illness and where it exists permanently in one’s life, it can shorten life expectancy significantly. On the other hand those people who are always happy and smiling, taking everything in their stride have been shown to live longer lives.

I started of by looking at the issue of work. I was getting so many people coming to me with work related stress. I was amazed at the number of people who were sick because they were in jobs they did not like. Whereas previously I would have listened to their complaints, make a diagnosis of high blood pressure and prescribe a drug I was now realizing that this blood pressure was being caused in some cases by being in a stressful job for years on end with no relief in sight except hopefully retirement with a good pension and then maybe I can finally have fun. Now stop to think for a moment. We all will in our lifetime spend at least eight hours a day at work, then eight to ten hours asleep. That leaves roughly six hours for other stuff. Frequently people tell me they are so tired at the end of the day they have no time for the other stuff!!

As a result of a job they hate, being tired all the time and ill health among other things, they find that they have no time for family, sexual life becomes non-existent, and there is no time for hobbies. They look forward to their annual leave for fun and relaxation. The usual pattern then is work hard for eleven months a year, in a job at which you are miserable and chronically sick, and then take one month leave. In that one month have as much fun as possible and then back to the job for another eleven months. I have seen people come to me asking for sick leave soon after coming back from vacation because they cant face their job just yet. Just thinking about it caused them stress.

All this moved me to see how I could get people to love their jobs or at least use the jobs they were to get the jobs they wanted. I also researched on ways to get people to have fun at work. Once I started on this line of treatment I was amazed by the results. People who had been chronically sick from non fulfilling jobs suddenly were looking forward to going to work and were actually having fun at work. That’s right! Having fun at work.

I believe if you are going to be spending so much of your life doing something would it not be nice if it was something you really enjoyed? Think of it this way—what if being at work was as much fun as being on holiday? So much fun, in fact that you look forward to going to wok as eagerly as you look forward to your holiday? It is possible.

I expanded this type of thinking and therapy to most illnesses be they work related or not. I began to realize that a person’s capacity to deal with stress and emotional issues was a very important factor in their staying healthy. I then came across Daniel Goleman’s book on something he called Emotional Intelligence. In his book he explained why high emotional intelligence could actually be of more value to us than a high IQ. This was my aha!! moment. I began to interview those patients who seemed to come to me very infrequently and appeared to be generally healthy. I realised that these people appeared to have a totally different attitude and emotional makeup to those who came to me week in and week out with never ending illnesses. Clearly some people were having fun at work and having full lives whilst others were not.

The people who were generally healthy appeared to have a better capacity to deal with stress, they were in jobs that they loved, they lived fulfilling love lives, had time for family and friends and generally for them life was a ball. What made these people to be this way? Overtime I picked up that among other things emotional intelligence, attitude, practicing gratitude, spirituality, being aware of the inner power that we posses in our minds were common factors to these people. They generally live in the now and did not waste time catastrophising about the future.

It is clear to me that most of us go about our daily lives believing our emotions or feelings are at the mercy of external factors. So we wake up in the morning and we hope it is going to be nice a day. What we are not aware of it is that happiness or our feelings have nothing to with what is happening outside of us. The power to control our emotions is in our hands. We just need to know how to use it and since illness frequently is caused by stressful emotions, it means that our health is in our hands to control. The barrier to health is our emotions.

In the instances where I have had the privilege of counselling people who have let emotional issues rule their life to the point of being physically sick, I have been gratified to see the truth of this statement as people’s lives changed with just learning how to take charge of their emotions and choosing to stay in a happy state. This is the state most conducive to perfect health.

It was not long before some of my clients started asking if I could hold group-teaching sessions for them on various health issues ranging from emotional issues such as anxiety depression to surviving in the work environment. I also got some positive suggestions on putting all my ideas into a book and hence the idea of the book was born.

I was not sure what format to write the book in. I did not want to create an academic textbook. That would defeat the whole purpose of reaching ordinary folks out there and making myself understood. I decided to make a record of the more challenging or interesting cases that I handled. I compiled them into a book of stories and then interspersed the stories with some discussion material, explanations and insights on how to deal with similar issues.

To the academically minded amongst you, the lay out of the book may not be so appealing but please bear with me as you read. What I don’t deal with in one chapter I deal with in another chapter. In some instances there may appear to be a lot of repetition. This is because I want to look at issues from different perspectives. A case in point being the issue of obesity. In one chapter I look at how weight is an emotion issue, in another I look at how it is related to one’s belief systems and in another on how it is caused by other factors. By reading the whole book, you then get a picture of my views on obesity and its management. I hope you get the picture.

I hope you get the message that I am setting out to impart to you, that the barrier to good health is your ability to control your emotions. Emotions themselves are influenced by various factors, which I have attempted to cover in some detail in the book.

In writing this book I wish to acknowledge the input and encouragement of my colleague Edith Morrison, a much respected Melbourne psychologist.

INTRODUCTION

Many researchers have shown that people of low socio-economic class are more prone to chronic disease, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, than people of high socio-economic class. This might seem like common knowledge but in science it is only a fact once it has been researched and proved. A recent publication in the Medical Journal of Australia says your postcode is a strong predictor of your stroke risk. Also, you are more likely to suffer a stroke and at a younger age if you live in a poorer suburb than if you live in a wealthy area.

The reason might seem obvious—one group has money and the other does not. If this were so, the incidence of chronic disease in rich countries such as Australia would be evenly distributed across all social classes; but it is not. Most people in rich countries, regardless of social class, eat well and have jobs. The lower socio-economic classes still fall sick more often.

Dr Michael. J Duckett in his book Breaking the Money Barriers makes an intriguing observation. He is an American and says if every American was given a million dollars in cash today, those who were originally poor would still be poor or even poorer several years later and those who were rich would still be rich or even richer.

He explains the difference between these two groups of people as one of attitude. The rich expect to be rich and the poor expect to be poor.

In almost three decades of caring for sick people I believe this is true for the health of an individual. Attitude and the emotions that go with it is a very big determinant of health. In simple language, those who live healthy and long lives expect it and those who live sickly and short lives expect it too.

Whether we like it or not we are more responsible for our health than we would like to believe. In most cases we actually cause illness in ourselves and shorten our own life spans. How is this possible, you might ask? Surely nobody would deliberately do that to themselves.

My intention in this book is to show that it is possible to do a lot of self-harm, often in the pursuit of the very thing that we desire most i.e. perfect health.

To use an example similar to Dr Duckett’s, I believe if a super being could wave a magic wand and make all of us well, five years later those who were prone to being sickly would be back to where they were in terms of their health and those who were originally healthy would be healthy or even healthier. I believe there are a significant number of people who expect to be sick and thus they do fall sick.

Except for a few cases, all of us are born in perfect health. We then take different paths on the well-being journey. The direction we take is influenced by many factors starting with our parents, then our beliefs, then our habits and so on.

The cause of more sickness in some people than others is more complex than lack of resources. It is complicated by stress and emotional factors. In people with more money, the feeling of being in control of their lives may be associated with very low anxiety levels; the reverse is true for lower socio-economic classes, even if they are well fed.

Attitude has been shown to be a strong factor in determining our well-being. Among the rich and well to do, there are many who suffer from chronic illness and other ailments mainly because they have a negative attitude towards disease. And among the not so well to do there are people who enjoy very good health despite a lack of resources. This can be attributed directly to their attitude towards their health.

Whereas attitude is an important determinant of health, other factors are also important. These revolve around a person’s emotional intelligence. How we handle our emotions is a very important determinant of health. Stress kills. All of us know that to some degree but how many know that you do not need to be at the mercy of your emotions?

The human being is a complex animal. Of all animals, it is the only one with an ego. Ego is defined as the ‘I’ or self of any person; a person as thinking, feeling and willing, and distinguishing itself from the selves of others and from objects of its thought.

The possession of an ego means that in the entire animal world, we are the only ones who:

• Are capable of being offended by another’s actions.

• Feel the need to win.

• Feel the need to be always right.

• Feel the need to be superior.

• Feel the need to have more.

• Feel the need for a good reputation.

These characteristics inevitably bring with them varying levels of anxiety or other adverse emotions that are very detrimental to your health. Take our tendency to be offended. This leads to anger which has been shown to be the emotion that most damages the heart.

Our need to win can cause persistent stress and anxiety, again leading to heart disease and other ailments. We feel we need more because we are always thinking from a position of lack. We believe there is not enough for everyone and therefore we go all out to get more for ourselves. If we believe we are failing in this we stress and this leads to illness. Almost everyone who comes to me with a stomach ulcer asks ‘Could this be caused by stress?’ We all know stress causes disease or dis–ease. If we know this, why do we continue to allow ourselves to be stressed?

It takes a high level of emotional intelligence to:

• Stop being offended.

• Let go of the need to win.

• Let go of the need to be right.

• Let go of the need to be superior.

• Let go of the need to have more.

• Let go of your reputation.

This is not a psychology textbook. Neither is it a study resource for any academic pursuit. It is just a narrative of the personal experiences of the author. It was written in response to repeated requests by my clients to put into writing the advice I kept giving them. Clearly whatever it was I was saying to them was being helpful.

In my practice as a family medicine practitioner I come across people with diverse emotional problems. I encounter people who have been stressed to the point of being sick. I have also dealt with people who have unknowingly willed themselves to sickness and eventually to death.

It is obvious to me that the cause of illness is not a clear cut matter in many cases. Science would like us to believe that the cause of illness always follows the pattern of exposure to a disease-causing agent followed by disease. The agent could be a virus or bacteria or other harmful organism. It could also be a poison in the environment. Whereas there is a lot of truth in this model, we all know people do not fall sick with equal frequency despite exposure to the same toxic environment. Some people are known as being always sick and some as never being sick. What is the cause of this difference if disease causation is so straightforward?

It is my contention that a person’s emotional competence plays a large role in the causation of disease. If it does not directly cause disease, it contributes by, for example, lowering the sufferer’s immune system. In this narrative I will share my views on various determinants of our emotional state as observed in almost three decades of working with sick people.

All the counsel I give to my clients is given on the basis that every illness has a psychological or emotional component. Sometimes it is the emotions that lead to illness and sometimes it is the emotions that come after the illness and make it worse. Regardless of which comes first, emotions play a major role in determining our state of health and even recovery from disease.

Helping sick people has been a very educative experience for me. I have come to understand that illness is not just about bugs and viruses and, nowadays, cholesterol, heart attacks and so on. If it were so, medicine would be a very simple career.

The emotional make up of a person is a very important factor in illness. I spend a lot of time going into the emotional state of any client who presents with a troublesome illness. Many don’t understand why I spend so much time on talk. They want me to touch them, tell them what is wrong with them and give them a pill. Yet, as I frequently remind them, they have come to me after this has been done for them with no success by several other doctors.

When I am under intense stress I develop loose bowels. Ever since I went to school and had to write exams I have known that the periods before the exam are filled with apprehension accompanied by loose bowels. Sometimes I sweat excessively, my mouth feels dry and I have no appetite. In fact one of my teachers advised me never to attempt to eat on the day of an exam.

Stressful situations in general do this to most people. In the short term, there is no damage to the body organs. However, if the stress is allowed to hang around for long, damage to the heart and other organs occurs. What we don’t realise is that chronic low-grade stress, which is barely noticeable to us, slowly but surely damages our vital organs and leads to chronic illness or premature death. An example would be a person working in a job they hate. They go to work because they need the money. Whereas they are happy with the money, there is chronic stress from disliking the job. In the end this leads to high blood pressure and complications such as heart attacks.

I have seen firsthand the effect of stress on the human body in the form of my patients. From retrospective questioning it is clear that a large number of people have willed themselves to death by not being able to manage their stress. I have sought to throw some light on how our emotional intelligence and emotions can lead either to perfect health or poor health.

I believe a good way of doing this is to relate the stories of these people (my clients) and tell you how I helped them work through their issues. In this way you might relate to their experiences and hopefully be able to use the advice I gave them in your own situation. I write exactly the way I speak to my clients. If at first you do not understand, keep reading; the message will become clear as you go through the various chapters.

I have also included some personal experiences, some of them life threatening, which I feel illustrate some important views I hold on the issue of emotions as determinants of health.

This book does not seek to change your life overnight. Reading it might not change anything at all. However, if it can get you to start thinking outside your square, it will have achieved something useful. As you go through the book it is my wish that it will generate some thoughts and induce new ways of looking at your health. It will then be up to you to seek the answers to your questions.

The Bottom Line

1. If everyone were given perfect health today, in five years time those who were originally sick will most likely have gone back to being sick and those who were well will have gone on to be healthier.

2. It’s like the poor man who wins the billion-dollar lottery and is poor again within five years whereas the self-made billionaire is even richer five years later.

3. We are all born, except for a few individuals, in perfect health. Yet many years later we are all in different states of health. A significant number of us go on to be sickly or prone to illness. Yet another group goes on to maintain perfect health and live very long and happy lives.

4. What is it that makes people go different ways in their paths to wellness? Some would argue that it’s all in the genes or it’s all bad luck. Our emotions are a major factor in the causation of illness. Tied in with our emotions are our attitudes, beliefs, imagination, upbringing and many other issues.

5. Do we have any control over whether we stay healthy or not? Are we at the mercy of fate? Are we all victims of predestination where some will die early or be unhealthy no matter what they do and others will be healthy regardless of what they do? Sometimes it does look that way. The truth is we all have more control over our heath than we think.

6. Our emotions are well within our control. If emotions are a major source of ill health and we can control them, we can influence our state of health in a very big way for the better.

7. I have seen firsthand how bad emotions and stress can cause disease. I have also seen how a change in attitude and assuming control over our emotions can improve one’s quality of life dramatically.

8. It is my hope that reading this book will give you an insight into the interplay between your emotions and your health.

CHAPTER ONE

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

All of us know what an emotion is. We understand it to be a feeling that comes in many forms. The most preferred is happiness, and the least preferred is sadness.

What most of us have probably never stopped to ask is, why do we have emotions? Are they any use? After all, emotions, even love, can cause distress. All of us know someone who is said to be short-tempered and not pleasant to be with. We also know people who are always happy, and we wish we could be with them all the time.

As a person thinks, feels, and believes, so is the condition of his mind, body and circumstances.

~ Dr Joseph Muir

So why do we need emotions? In evolutionary history, emotions were the most important survival tool we had. Probably the earliest emotion to develop was fear. This was linked to the earliest sensory ability to evolve fully, the sense of smell. We learned very early on in primitive times which scents meant potential danger and which meant relative safety. If a prehistoric man smelled a lion, he knew it was time to run or hide. Similarly, all animals in the wild rely heavily on smell for survival. You only have to watch a documentary of animals on the savannah to see how they constantly have their noses in the air. As soon as there is the hint of the scent of a predator, the animals stop feeding and run.

What triggers an emotion? An emotion is usually triggered by an event or thought of an event. The brain thinks in pictures only. Events are essentially pictures. This means emotions are triggered solely by pictures we hold in the mind or see in real life. The extent to which a real-life picture and a picture in the brain trigger an emotion is the same. An emotion will not be less intense because you are imagining or thinking of an unpleasant event and it’s not real. It will be as unpleasant as if it were happening in real life. Thinking of your lover can be as exciting as seeing him or her in real life. Thinking of the local bully can be as distressing as when you are actually confronted by the bully.

If you see a snake crawling across your yard, this triggers the emotion of fear, or if you see your lover running towards you, this triggers the emotions of happiness and love. Emotions are part of our daily lives.

The key to which emotion we experience depends on our individual interpretation of an event. It is not the event itself that causes the emotion; it is the interpretation of the event.

Emotions can be good for you. Happy people are healthy people.

Emotions can be bad for you. Sadness is associated with an increased incidence of disease and a reduced lifespan.

Your emotions can work for you or against you. In this book, we will look at how emotions come about, how they can get out of control, and how to consider ways of making them work for you.

Often, it is only by understanding a disease’s process that we begin to get well. As we see how our own thinking and reaction to situations cause us distress and ill health, we can choose how we react to events in our lives and, in so doing, preserve our health.

Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, But one who has a

hasty temper exalts folly.

A tranquil mind gives life to the flesh.

But passion makes the bones rot.

Proverbs 14 vs. 29-30

This is not a psychology text. For those who wish to learn the full details on emotional intelligence, I would recommend a book such as Daniel Coleman’s Emotional Intelligence or related texts. The aim of this book is to show you the origins of some of the health issues we experience in as simple a way as possible. As you identify these in your life and how you could possibly have caused them, it is my hope that you can then change your thinking and attitude to achieve better health.

For optimum health, we need to control our passions or emotions. Be slow to anger and quick to smile.

Emotional intelligence is all about keeping your stress levels at a minimum and managing your relationships.

The Bottom Line

• Human beings are emotional beings.

• We tend to add emotion to any event that has meaning to us.

• In evolutionary terms, emotions have developed as a very important survival tool. The first emotion to develop fully was likely fear. This emotion was essential in preventing our ancestors ending up as dinner for wild animals.

• Today, emotions still serve a very important purpose. The most preferred feeling is happiness, and the least preferred is sadness.

• Happiness is conducive to good health. Sadness may lead to ill health.

• For optimum health, we need to control our passions or emotions. Be slow to anger and quick to smile.

• Emotional intelligence is all about our ability to control our emotions in a way that serves us.

CHAPTER TWO

PHYSIOLOGY OF STRESS

When stressed, the body reacts via what is called the autonomic nervous system (ANS) to release various stress hormones or chemicals. The ANS is made up of the parasympathetic nervous system (for conserving energy) and the sympathetic nervous system (for fight or flight).

In stressful situations, the sympathetic system releases the chemicals adrenaline and noradrenaline. The net effect of these chemicals is to prepare the body for either a fight or flight.

The sympathetic nervous system has a profound effect on the organs of the body. It increases the strength of skeletal muscles, decreases blood clotting time, increases heart rate, increases sugar and fat levels, reduces intestinal movement, and inhibits tears and digestive secretions.

The sympathetic nervous system also relaxes the bladder in a reaction that is well-known to us: People who are scared enough will urinate on themselves or go even further and soil their pants. The pupils are dilated to maximum, presumably to improve vision, and mental activity is increased. In primitive times, this would have been very important in detecting predators and plotting which direction to run.

The sympathetic nervous system also increases perspiration and inhibits penile erection or vaginal lubrication. In a later chapter, I talk about erectile failure in men, showing that this occurs as a panic reaction that releases large quantities of adrenalin into the body to inhibit penile erection.

The sympathetic nervous system constricts most blood vessels but dilates those in the heart, legs, and arms. This helps to shut down nonessential actions such as digestion and penile erection. This ensures that the muscles of the legs and heart have a maximum supply of blood and oxygen, thus giving legs and arms much-needed extra strength for fight or flight.

In addition, there are the adrenal glands situated on top of the kidneys. These two glands are also stimulated to secrete large quantities of adrenalin and noradrenaline. They increase the metabolic rate, shut down nonessential functions such as urination, increase blood flow to muscles, and increase blood flow to the heart muscle, among other actions.

In the brain, the pituitary gland is triggered to secrete a hormone that stimulates the adrenal glands to secrete cortisol, which also helps to ready the body for fight or flight.

Stress Can Kill

In real-life situations, the stress reaction is vital for survival in the short term. It helps us to get out of danger very quickly and efficiently. Let’s say you wake up at night and realise your house is on fire. Your stress reaction will ensure that you pick up the baby, wake up everyone, grab your precious box of jewellery, and get out of the house, all in less than a minute.

The same stress reaction leads to the performance of so-called heroic acts in which people have rescued friends and relatives in trouble. Observe, for instance, the little old lady who comes running out of a hotel at full speed while carrying her suitcase of clothes when she hears the fire alarm. Earlier on, when she checked in, she could hardly move the suitcase. The stress reaction gives her all the strength she needs.

In the wild, the stress reaction is played out over and over again in the game of survival between predators and prey. When faced with a lion on the savannah, an impala is faced with three minutes of sheer terror during which it will either become dinner or will escape. In three minutes, it is all over, either way. Where the impala has survived the attack, it forgets the incident immediately and concentrates on feeding and breeding. The same scenario will be played out again in the coming days until that fateful day when it becomes dinner for real. But until that day comes, the animal is not capable of worry. This is where human beings are different.

The human being is the only animal capable of worry in anticipation of a bad event. Not only that, but humans will continue to worry and stress over an event that is over and done with. When missed being hit by a car by a hair’s breadth, we remain in shock and continue to stress about what would have happened if the car had been that much closer. This is in contrast to animals; they live in and for the moment. We could do well to learn from them.

Whereas the stress reaction is over in animals within a few minutes, in humans it is perpetuated by our capacity to think. We retain a memory of a traumatic event and start fearing it might happen again. We worry about whether we would be able to save ourselves next time. As a result, the stress hormones remain raised long after the stressing event.

In the short term, in an acute stress reaction, the blood supply to the intestines and stomach is shut down. This is all very well if it is for a short time. If prolonged, it will lead to ulcers, stomach pains, diarrhoea, and cramps, among other things.

Cortisol leads to an increase in blood pressure, a reduction in inflammation, and reduced lymphocytes (cells that kill invading bacteria). Over a long time, raised cortisol levels lead to decreased immunity that causes increased susceptibility to disease. Prolonged stress therefore causes ill health. The high blood pressure can lead to strokes if unchecked.

In addition, the stimulated adrenal glands produce a hormone called aldosterone. Its function is to retain salt in the blood. Prolonged excessive and inappropriate salt retention leads to permanent high blood pressure. High blood pressure leads to damage to the heart, kidneys and brain. Virtually everyone knows that high blood pressure causes a stroke and can cause heart failure. Heart disease is now a leading cause of death in the western society at a time when the levels of stress in society are at an all time high.

The effect of persistent stress, even at low intensity, is to lower the body’s immunity and to raise blood pressure. There is no safe chronic stress.

Indian deer are well adapted to life in the wild. This includes being acutely attuned to danger from the Bengal tiger. The deer is so highly strung that it will bolt at incredible speeds at the slightest hint of a tiger. When kept in captivity these animals have been known to die within fifteen minutes because in captivity the stress hormones remain excessively high and literally burn out the animal. In other types of deer, similar chronic stress leads to what is called capture myopathy and animals die in large numbers.

In humans chronic severe stress can kill just as in animals. Fortunately, it usually takes much longer than fifteen minutes to kill us. This allows us time as thinking beings to terminate the stress. Our thoughts and perception of an event are what perpetuate the stress.

Most of us live our lives believing we are the victims of random events around us and that we have no control over our stress levels. I am here to tell you that you have more control than you think. This is what emotional intelligence is all about, keeping stress at negligible levels and living happily.

Voodoo deaths

Intense emotions can kill. This applies for extreme joy as well as extreme anxiety. In both cases the heart is flushed with a toxic dose of adrenaline and is damaged enough to kill. Such deaths are referred to as voodoo deaths. During the 2006 soccer World Cup in Germany there was a spike in heart attacks. Every day the German team played there was a higher than usual number of heart attacks. The Germans were getting over-excited and for some it was just too much.

A man who scored a hole in one while playing golf with his mates was heard saying, ‘I can die now’. He went on to have a massive heart attack soon after and died.

One of my elderly neighbours died of a long illness. Everyone knew she had been unwell and, being advanced in age, death was expected. A phone call was made to one of her daughters who was visiting in South Africa. She died on hearing of her mother’s death. She was a very healthy young woman but the news of her mother’s death was too much for her. The family held two funerals instead of one.

Dr Martin A Samuels, chairman of the department of neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, says there is an increase in the number of heart attacks during earthquakes from an average of one in a million to five in a million. This has to do with all the attendant stress that goes with an earthquake.

Stress therefore can kill acutely. It is easy to understand how an episode of stress can flush the heart with just enough adrenaline to damage it to below the threshold required for a heart attack. The person will not die but the heart is irreparably damaged. Heart muscles, once damaged, heal very poorly and are often replaced with fibrous tissue. If the individual then keeps getting toxic doses of adrenaline, it is easy to see how this can lead to an early death even in an apparently very healthy adult.

Laughter

To highlight the bad effects of stress one must look at the condition of ‘being free of stress’. This is the emotional state we call happiness.

To highlight the crucial importance of staying happy all the time I will dwell on the topic of laughter. Laughter represents a happy state. It represents what most of us desire. All of us love to be around someone who laughs easily. It makes us feel good to be with such a person.

Children laugh more than three hundred times a day whereas adults laugh only fifteen times. This is because children laugh unconditionally while adults do so only if there is a cause.

Stress raises adrenalin, laughter lowers it. Research has shown that people who laugh often have fewer heart attacks. So highly regarded is laughter for health that there have been formed laughter clubs all over the world. The laughter clubs are a joint effort by like-minded people to liberate laughter and happiness from reason; for, where there is logic, there is no laughter. ‘The very essence of laughter is absurdity,’ points out Madan Kataria, the author of Laugh for No Reason.

Norman Cousins, an American journalist, suffered from a painful and debilitating spinal disease. He discovered that comedies on video greatly alleviated his pain. He discharged himself from hospital and checked into a hotel where he watched all his favourite comedy videos. He immersed himself in only funny movies and television shows. He enjoyed every one of the Charlie Chaplin movies, and watched Candid Camera episodes until his sides hurt from laughing. He was soon cured of his illness.

Cousins went on to publish a book called The Anatomy of Illness that brought the world’s attention to the therapeutic effects of laughter. There is now an international laughter club inspired by his discovery and more than sixty laughter yoga clubs in Australia.

Cousins’ experiences led him to question Western medicine. Cousins found the treatments suggested by his doctors to be totally lacking.

Patch Adams is a movie that pays tribute to the happy doctor of the same name. I recommend you have a look at it. It is based on the real life story of the Gesundheit Institute, which was founded to bring ‘fun, friendship, and the joy of service back into health care.’

Dr K P Misra is a cardiologist at the Apollo Hospital in Chennai, India. He firmly believes that humour is essential for good health. He has written a book called Humour in Medicine and is frequently asked to talk to business executives and management of companies in India. He believes life should be lived joyously and as we spend much of our time at work he teaches on ‘The Joy of Work’. He believes a laugh a day keeps the doctor away.

Effects of laughter

Laughter is an aerobic exercise; it works out muscles and raises the heart rate. Norman Cousins called it ‘internal jogging’ and used to laugh until his ribs hurt!

Laughing