Zen of Crushing Stress Now!: Healthy Living

By SHIV HARSH

We can beat stress, crush it. It is in our hands.

 

What's going on here? Why are my hands shaking and heart racing? The doc said my blood pressure is up a little. He claims it's stress. What stress? Me, stressed out? As soon as I get the kids out the door, I'll jump in my car and drive like crazy to get to my meeting on time.

 

Honk, honk! Why can't these guys get a move on? I need to reach my office. Could my doc really be right? He's pretty smart. He says everybody and his cousin is stressed out these days. Even my wife keeps saying I'm all stressed out. And she's a smart lady. I guess I might be just a touch stressed out.

 

Oh, breakfast? Quick stop at Starbucks, gulp down the coffee, inhale my bagel, and I'm good to go. If I'm late, Jim next door will get the promotion. Can't let that happen. I promised my wife a new Jaguar for her birthday.

 

If you get on the highway from Boston and head south, you'll reach Florida. If you don't want that, you need to change course.

 

If we want to avoid being sooooo stressed out all the time, and we don't like what chronic stress can do to us—we need to change course.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SHIV HARSH
• Release date: Dec 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393206323

Book preview

Introduction

Stress is a four-letter word. Or rather, a five-letter word, which should be made an honorary four-letter word. We hate it. It sends shudders down our spines. It really should not be used in polite society. But it is. In fact, we use it with a frequency exceeded only by sailors using four-letter words.

Stressed out is a cousin of our honorary four-letter word. If anything, it is used even more frequently than stress. I am sooooo stressed out is another cousin, rapidly climbing up the frequent-use ladder.

If a visitor from Mars landed here, he would feel that our atmosphere is suffused with stress. Oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and . . . stress. You can’t escape it. And everybody is either stressed out, or sooooo stressed out.

When I was a cardiology fellow (trainee) in New York, many moons ago, I used to prepare patients for heart catheterization (angiography). I still remember a young man who blurted out as soon as I approached him, I know I am too young to have heart disease. But I am under so much stress.

Why? I asked.

It’s my job.

What do you do? I asked.

I sell children’s shoes.

I had to struggle to suppress my laughter. But in retrospect, he had a point. Salespeople have targets. They work on a commission based on how many shoes they sell. Stress. And resultant heart disease.

Was it always thus? Not really.

And it doesn’t have to be so.

Chapter 1

The Good Old Days?

Our bodies were not manufactured yesterday. Or even the day before.

All living things have a couple of goals in common. They want to survive for as long as possible. Or at least till they can pass on their genes to the next generation, which is the next goal. Propagation of the species.

To live, you have to eat. And to ward off predators. There were no MacDonald’s fast food franchise stores at every corner in pre-historic times. No Starbucks either. So our ancestors had to wander far and wide in search of food and drink.

They had stress. But it was basic. They got hungry and food was scarce. They were hunter-gatherers. So they went out to hunt. And that introduced more stress: of possible death in pursuit of food. Deer were not very accommodating. They ran away and hunters had to chase them. Which sometimes led them to unfamiliar territory, at times in poor light. The sun would set after a day’s fruitless hunt.

What was that? A rustling of leaves. A low growl? Could it be a tiger? It could.

That was where the stress response kicked in and was very helpful. The famous fight-or-flight response. The body was designed well. Given that scary situation, stress hormones poured out into the blood stream.

Fight-or-Flight

The brain is at the center of this stress response. The eyes or ears, or both, sense an imminent danger: a tiger might be on the prowl. This information is sent to a part of the brain called the amygdala. Shaped like an almond, the two amygdala are situated deep in the temporal lobes of the brain. They consist of a group of nuclei that process emotions.

If the eyes have the slightest suspicion of a predator or the ears hear alarming rustling of leaves in a jungle, the amygdala take notice and immediately send an alarm signal to the hypothalamus in the brain: DANGER! DANGER!

The hypothalamus now takes control. Orders are sent to the autonomic nervous system to prepare the body to stand and fight or flee rapidly. The autonomic nervous system has two parts: the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic nervous system.

We are all familiar with the sympathetic nervous system: the adrenaline surge. The hypothalamus alerts the adrenal glands, which sit on top of our kidneys. They pour adrenaline (also called epinephrine) into the bloodstream. This works miracles. Our heart rate goes up, the blood pressure goes up, and more blood rushes to the muscles, heart, and other crucial organs. Our hearing improves and our eyesight becomes sharper--as do other senses. We breathe faster, and more airways open up in the lungs. With each breath, there is more intake of oxygen. The brain receives more oxygen, heightening alertness. Not only that, but sugar and fats are released from their storage sites under the influence of adrenaline. This gives the entire body the extra energy it might need.

So, you are really all stressed out. And in a good way. If it’s a small predator, you can stand your ground and fight with renewed vigor, thanks to your stress hormones. And if your odds of winning a fight are low, your muscles have extra strength to run like crazy.

But adrenaline alone doesn’t cut it. If the danger persists, the hypothalamus goes to Plan B: stimulating the HPA axis, the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. The result: cortisol pours into your blood. This keeps the body on high alert.

All of this occurs almost instantaneously. Even before the visual center fully processes its impulses, the whole body reacts at the speed of light. You barely sense a car rushing toward you, but you promptly jump to one side and save your life.

That is what this system was meant to do: save lives. And danger surrounded our prehistoric ancestors on all sides. See-hear-jump: in the blink of an eyelid. A strange man coming down a trail at you: friend or foe? No time to think. Guess and react—quickly, with intensity. Lives were at stake.

But then the brakes were necessary. You either died or survived. If you were alive, you had to calm down. The cortisol levels in the blood started going down. The parasympathetic nervous system kicked in, applying the brakes, encouraging the stress response to fade away. And you could go about your normal life as your heart rate and breathing slowed down and your blood pressure returned to normal.

And Now?

This stress response has started to hurt us. Tigers are in short supply. Strangers don’t jump out of the shadows and stab us (most of the time), and threats to life and limb are fewer. But nobody has told our brains that. Evolutionary skills don’t disappear so quickly.

New Tigers

Our ancient brain still keeps looking for tigers, for new dangers. Those dangers may not threaten our lives, but they still stimulate