Wednesday 7 November 2007 is National Stress Awareness Day
In recognition of this day, I will be hosting a free teleseminar looking at exactly what stress is, how it affects your body and discussing some ways in which you can reduce your stress.
To register for this free teleseminar, please click on the link Reduce Your Stress
“Obesity is an international scourge,” congress chairman Professor Paul Zimmet said in his opening speech at the International Congress on Obesity back in April 2007. “This insidious, creeping pandemic of obesity is now engulfing the entire world. It’s as big a threat as global warming and bird flu.” A pandemic is an epidemic that has gone global.
Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association today published a global study that found that approximately 40% of men and 30% of women around the world are overweight, and approximately 24% of men and 27% of women are obese. The study, led by Beverley Balkau, director of research at INSERM in Villejuif, France used the waist to hip ratio as well as Body Mass Index (BMI) of 168,159 people (69,409 men, 98,750 women) in 63 countries. Balkau says taking the waist measurement was particularly important since the measurement is “a more powerful clinical marker of heart disease and diabetes than BMI. The study results show that excess body weight is pandemic, with one-half to two-thirds of the overall study population being overweight or obese,” Balkau said.
Using the waist measurements, Balkau’s team found that more than half the study population, 56% of men and 71% of women, had excess abdominal fat. That was defined as a waist circumference greater than 94 cm (37 inches) in men and 80 cm (31.5 inches) in women. “Overall, there’s a significant increase in the frequency of heart disease and diabetes with increasing waist circumference,” Balkau noted.
“For men, each increase of approximately 5.5 inches (14 centimeters) means an increased frequency of about 35% for heart disease and for women an increase of approximately six inches (15 centimeters) equates to a 40% increase for heart disease. Even in people who are lean, an increasing waist circumference means increasing risk for heart disease and diabetes.”
A Government Advisor, Professor Julian Le Grand, has proposed that health promoting strategies are put in place with individuals required to specifically opt out if they did not want to participate. Some of the proposals include: companies with more than 500 employees to provide a daily exercise hour, smokers to purchase a tobacco permit, manufacturers banned from adding salt to food and the provision of free fruit to employees by companies. Are we moving to a nanny state? What happened to self-responsibility?
Here’s a thought, research indicates a link between obesity and long-term levels of stress. One study indicated that a neurotransmitter found in the brain that activates feelings of hunger may be stimulated by stress. And that there is a correlation with this neurotransmitter, Neuropeptide Y, and abdominal fat.
So whilst it is important to exercise regularly and eat a healthy balanced diet with an appropriate amount of good fats, it’s also important to look after our mental health. It’s no coincidence that there is an increase in stress levels and we are now looking at an obesity pandemic.
There are many types of stress – competitive stress is one of them. The amazing thing is that your body will tell you when it’s feeling a bit stressed so that you can take action to work with that stress and then support your body back to a balanced state. I was interested to read the recent interview with Jonny Wilkinson where he talked about the feedback he was getting during a pretty intense time.
Jonny said, “You can feel and see your shirt moving with your heartbeat. You might not look nervous but it isn’t like that.” I must admit, there were times during Saturday’s game where I could feel my heartbeat too! He mentioned that he was so nervous the night before that he only got an hour’s sleep. Wow! I wish I can I could perform at that level on one hour’s sleep. “I wonder if there’s a medical reason, the toxins of anxiety and nerves, because the next day I felt hungover; regardless of how I sleep.” “I wake up feeling sick. I lie in bed feeling sick in the stomach, my head aching.” Again, great examples of biofeedback that may arise when we feel stressed.
I meet this collection of symptoms a lot. Ok, my clients may not be engaged in performing miracles on the rugby field in front of millions of people, but this set of symptoms is very common when people are engaged in stressful situations, especially situations where they are not in a position to show that they are stressed.
So what can you do? The first thing to remember is that stress is a normal, natural reaction that manifests itself as physiological changes in the body and specific emotional responses. Even rugby superheroes occasionally experience it! The trick is becoming aware of your stress and then giving your body an opportunity to rebalance. It’s also worth checking in with the meaning that you are giving to a particular situation. By changing the meaning, you can stop it from being a cause of stress.
42% of the people surveyed by Coleman Parkes for the Relaxation for Living Institute said they felt stressed each day, with 1-in-5 people feeling stressed before they have had breakfast. This figure doubles by the time they get to work or drop the kids off at school.
On average, adults say they feel anxious for at least 2 hours a day. What’s causing us to feel stressed? Top of the list was financial worries, closely followed by problems at work and relationship issues. 45% of women and 24% of men surveyed said they were stressed about how they looked.
Two thirds of those surveyed said they regularly feel overwhelmed and 1-in-8 people are angry or are at boiling point. Studies such as the Framingham Heart Study have demonstrated a strong correlation between emotions such as anger and heart disease. More than half (52%) of the population has had sleeping difficulties, one-in-two have suffered headaches or even migraines, nearly a quarter (23%) have had digestive problems and, nearly a fifth (17%) admit suffering panic attacks.
How are we coping with stress? More than one-in-four (28%) people use alcohol to try to cope when stressed and, surprisingly, the same percentage of people also turn to coffee.
So what can you do to reduce stress? Alcohol and coffee may change your bio-chemistry for a short period of time but it’s not going to reduce stress. This is because stress starts in the mind when we perceive a situation to be threatening. Why do we feel threatened? It may be the meaning we have given the situation, our inherent personality or a lack of coping strategies. Change how we perceive a situation or our assessment of how we will deal with the event and you change the whole stress reaction at its source.
By factoring in biofeedback so you are aware of your stress triggers, you can take action before the headaches and panic attacks begin. Build relaxation into your lifestyle and you help your body to reduce tension and minimise that gradual buildup of pressure. By reducing the build up of pressure you minimise the need to explode at the tiniest thing.
A team led by Dr Elizabeth Pradhan at the University of Maryland School of Medicine concluded that a form of meditation known as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) helped people diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) to manage emotional distress and depression. Whilst meditation did not appear to alleviate the condition, Dr Pradhan’s team found that complementary therapies, such as meditation, supported patients undergoing treatment by improving their sense of well-being.
“There’s a fair amount of emotional distress that accompanies RA in terms of stability, worrying about the future, worrying about the ability to take care of oneself, to keep a job, to say nothing about the daily pain,” Pradhan said. “There’s just a lot to deal with. So, I think this is a novel and innovative way to handle this emotional distress and one that hasn’t been tried before, and we were happy to see that it did make a difference along those lines.”
“It doesn’t really change disease status. That didn’t happen,” she said. “But in terms of ability to cope with a chronic and debilitating condition, meditation did appear to be quite helpful. And there was really high satisfaction with the intervention. So, I think this bodes well for the future.”
“The other thing I think is important to note about our study,” Pradhan said, “is that mindfulness meditation can be combined with any rheumatological therapy. It is truly complementary medicine in that sense, done in addition to pharmacological or other intervention. So, for physicians and patients who wonder what they can do to improve well-being, beyond taking medications, this study offers evidence for a beneficial approach to dealing with the psychological distress of RA.”
Dr. Stephen Lindsey, head of rheumatology at Ochsner Health Systems in Baton Rouge, La., said, “If someone is having stress and trouble with their arthritis, if you can somehow decrease the stress, you might be able to increase their function,” Lindsey said. “And when you’re meditating, you’re trying to relax your body and get rid of the tension. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a meditation scheme. It could be yoga, or Pilates, or a self-help course. But I’m in favour of using everything possible to help people, and this would be just one more way to help patients improve their lives.”