The Stress Protection Plan. Leon Chaitow
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originating factors. Attitudes, beliefs, behaviour patterns, personality traits (the major features of the hardiness factor: control, challenge and commitment) and deeply entrenched habits of thought may all be partly responsible, and I shall explain several ways of examining and modifying them. The importance of correct nutrition, sufficient exercise and rest, as well as such things as adequate exposure to full spectrum light (daylight), will be other themes which I touch on in as much as they relate to stress reduction and to our aim of stress-proofing ourselves.
These areas are important, but the main point of this book is to show that there are defences which can be erected against stress, whatever form it takes, and that by the regular application of these methods great benefit can be derived in terms of health and well-being. We must certainly aim at reducing stress, but must also increase our resistance to it and learn to counteract its effects.
Effective stress-proofing, therefore, involves taking responsibility; which means incorporating positive action in various areas of your life. For, it is necessary and desirable to understand not just the causes of stress, but also the physiological and pathological effects which it can produce, and the ways in which its negative tendencies can be countered. For the very best results such strategies need to be combined with methods which effectively increase and enhance the natural defences against stress, which some people have in greater or lesser degree than others. The importance of reviewing, and altering where necessary, your diet, exercise and rest patterns, lifestyle and personal attitude, as well as behaviour patterns (many of which are within our conscious control) are all features of this comprehensive protection plan which can deflect many of the potentially harmful effects of hectic modern-day life.
Next, I present a number of different breathing exercises and patterns, and relaxation methods, as well as a selection of meditation techniques, together with a résumé of current thinking on the use of mind/body therapies, such as visualization, which emphasize the power of the mind in promoting good health.
One of the quickest ways in which your blood chemistry can be disturbed under stress conditions, producing a host of symptoms – ranging from feelings of intense agitation and weakness to anxiety and panic attacks, as well as physical effects such as numbness of the limbs, nausea, stomach cramps and shivering – is by hyperventilation. In Chapter I give a detailed explanation of this widespread phenomenon of over-breathing, and show how it can usually be dealt with swiftly by using special breathing techniques which almost anyone can learn to apply to themselves.
Whilst the process by which hyperventilation affects us is relatively easy to grasp, there are other aspects of stress’s interaction with our minds and nervous systems which are quite complex. One is the effect of the state of mind on the immune (defence) system of our bodies. The new science which concerns itself with this side of things is called psychoneuroimmunology, and it deserves to be more widely understood, for it holds the key to many common and some serious health problems.
The discovery and proof of the existence of this mind/immune system link was made as far back as 1975 by Dr Robert Ader, a psychologist at the University of Rochester in the USA. He had been studying the effects of giving laboratory rats an unpleasant drug-induced sensation of nausea every time they drank water which had been sweetened with saccharine. He was in fact studying the phenomenon of conditioned response, made famous (some would say notorious) by Pavlov in his dog experiments half a century previously. Just as Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate whenever a bell was rung (through having been conditioned by a bell being rung whenever they were fed), so did Ader’s rats learn to feel sick whenever they were allowed to drink sweet water.
In itself this result was not sufficient to attract attention, but what Ader observed next was of profound importance. He saw that not only did his rats dutifully become sick whenever they had sweetened water (even after the drug injections had ceased), they soon began to really sicken and to die. The reason, he found, was that the drug he had been using to induce a feeling of sickness was an immune depressing substance. So, not only had the rats learned to feel sick when they drank the sweet water, they also mimicked the other immune suppressing effects of the drug, even long after the drug administration had ceased, producing in themselves a reduction of immune function. As a result they went on to die of auto-immune diseases or overwhelming infection allowed to occur through their self-induced immune response suppression.
This was surely proof positive that the mind can control immune function directly, and that it could switch off the defence mechanism sufficiently to allow serious illness and death to occur. Much additional evidence has subsequently been produced which supports Ader’s original observations. Does this also apply to humans? Indeed it does, and many medical studies have proved it to the extent that researchers are being led to the conclusion that it is not stress which does the damage, but how we handle it. This is something we should be sure to take heed of.
A leading article in the 27 June 1987 edition of the Lancet, one of Britain’s most prestigious medical journals, under the title of ‘Depression, stress and immunity’, came to the conclusion that ‘it is the individual’s response to stress that determines the effects on immunity rather than the stress itself.’ This statement is of profound importance and deserves illustration.
One easy measurement of immune function can be made by studying the efficiency, or otherwise, of a group of defensive cells which go by the name of ‘natural killer cells’. Their function is termed ‘natural killer cell activity’ (NKCA). When this was measured in groups of medical students before an important examination, NKCA was found to be depressed in some but not in others. These observations were then compared with psychological profiles previously conducted on the same students, and it was discovered that they related directly; that is, those students who were known to be ‘poor copers’ (high levels of reported life stress accompanied by health distress), or subject to loneliness (social isolation) were also the students with poor NKCA at exam time. In contrast, those who were good copers (high life stress but little health distress) had continued high performance in the NKCA when confronted by examination stresses.
It is no surprise that the poor copers were the ones who became ill with colds, ‘flu etc., since their immune function was inadequate when faced by infectious agents. The stress of exams was the same for all the students, and this presents a clear picture of where the cause lies – not with stress alone, but with the way it was handled. Numerous studies confirm this. As the famous American surgeon, Bernie Siegel, MD, states: ‘The medical profession is going to have to confront this thing we call the mind.’
Research at the National Institute for Mental Health in America by Candace Pert, a neuropharmacologist, has shown that substances called neuropeptides, which are messenger molecules which interact between the nervous system and the immune system (in all animal and plant life) appear to unify the multiple interacting systems in the body so that they act in concert to survive, unless negative health-destroying factors are at work. This may well be the way psychological factors interact with the immune system. This new knowledge is summarized quite graphically by the words of another American researcher, Robert Cathcart, MD, who says: ‘All the vitamin C in the world won’t make up for a lousy attitude.’
Among the chemical changes found to take place in the brain in response to stress, sometimes within seconds, are increased production of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, epinephrin (what used to be called adrenalin), acetylcholine and dopamine, all of which increase the excitability of nerve cells.
It is therefore abundantly clear where we need to focus our attention if we are to avoid those aspects of ill-health which relate to stress. As the Lancet puts it: ‘The efforts of psychologists, counsellors and indeed general practitioners may be of more value … were they to concentrate on improving coping skills and increasing people’s sense of self-efficacy … for fortunately all these procedures [learning of coping skills] can be taught.’ So, according to the most respected medical opinion, we can learn to handle stress and many of its negative influences on the body chemistry and immune function.
A variety of techniques exist in this field, some more suited to a particular person than others. The main aim of this book is to enable the reader to find those methods that best suit him or her, and to explain how important