Nov 09
3
Stress And Illness
Expert Doctor’s main message, drilled into us over and over again is that coronary heart disease is not just a physical condition caused by a cholesterol-rich diet or lack of exercise. Traditional risk factor cholesterol, blood pressure, age, gender, genetics, smoking, diabetes, obesity, sedentary life explains only 50 percent of heart disease. Its deeper causes can be found in total lifestyle, which includes how we work and play, how to relax and manage our stress, how we relate to others and obtain social support, how we react to what happens to us now and how we view the future. In other words, heart disease is as much due to our external/physical habits as to our inner life our emotional and spiritual state.
An interesting study showed that the frequency with which a person refers to him or herself that is, using “I,” “me” “my” and “mine” in an ordinary conversation actually predicted the recurrence of a heart attack! Apparently, focusing on oneself shows feelings of isolation, which lead to stress, which lead to illness. Similarly, certain elements of the type A personality self-involvement, hostility and cynicism were found to be toxic to the heart.
In poetry, art and literature, the heart is often used symbolically as the organ of the emotions. Expert Doctor concludes that this is not just metaphorical language: the heart is actually the place where the body, the psyche and the spirit all converge. So whatever abuse we inflict on our inner selves affects our physical heart. Thus his lifestyle change program includes improving communication skills to develop more intimacy, and even connecting to a higher force.
He describes it thus: “this is a program about how enjoy living, not how to avoid dying. How to relax, not how to be lethargic. How to manage stress, not how to avoid it. How to live in the world more fully, not how to withdraw from it. How to take care yourself, so that you can also give more fully to others.”