The stress antidote A cure is needed to end an addictive cycle. Story: Jim Richards
The number of statistics linking stress to disease is unbelievably high. Stress is related to every known chronic disease. Stress can so weaken the body and mind that it begins to facilitate the growth of harmful pathogens, leading to disease. It can also cause a mild, solvable problem to blossom into an incurable illness. Most drugs prescribed for various stress-related problems do nothing for the underlying cause. In fact, they actually feed the problem. If people have inflammation in their knee causing mild pain and they take a pain reliever, they are masking the problem. This means they will continue to walk and exercise on a knee that needs treatment. Since the pain is masked, they usually will make the situation worse and cause the inflammation to increase until they need knee replacement. When we mask symptoms of stress, whether physical or emotional, we do nothing to solve the underlying problem. Therefore, we continue to do and think the way that created stress. As our level of stress increases, our need for larger doses of medication or even additional medication grows. Just like the knee treatment that focused on symptoms but exacerbated the problem, those who take a symptom-based
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approach to anything seldom ever solve the root cause. Therefore, the problem usually gets worse! Interestingly, some studies show that many of the drugs used to deal with stress and anxiety actually render the user a decreased level of empathy. With less empathy, we tend to become more abusive to those in our environment, which always leads to more conflict and stress. Thus, the cycle is exacerbated. Once the mind and body adapt to function under stress, we lose our ability to function without stress. In fact, our body and brain become addicted to the “stress hormones,” and like any addiction, we don’t know how to live unless we feel stress. For example, the great majority of people with type A personalities do not feel they can be productive unless they’re under stress. This can begin in school: you put off writing a paper until the last night and your emotions are raging, so you stay up all night overindulging in caffeine and you finish your paper just in time. So, you begin to think that it was, in fact, the stress that brought about your productivity. One only has to do this a few times to become addicted to this neurological process. They eventually will reach a place where they will create