We are all famil­iar with the word “stress”. Stress is when you are wor­ried about get­ting laid off your job, or wor­ried about hav­ing enough money to pay your bills, or wor­ried about your mother when the doc­tor says she may need an oper­a­tion. In fact, to most of us, stress is syn­ony­mous with worry. If it is some­thing that makes you worry, then it is stress.

Your body, how­ever, has a much broader def­i­n­i­tion of stress. TO YOUR BODY, STRESS IS SYNONYMOUS WITH CHANGE. Any­thing that causes a change in your life causes stress. It doesn’t mat­ter if it is a “good” change, or a “bad” change, they are both stress. When you find your dream apart­ment and get ready to move, that is stress. If you break your leg, that is stress. Good or bad, if it is a CHANGE in your life, it is stress as far as your body is concerned.

Even IMAGINED CHANGE is stress. (Imag­in­ing changes is what we call “wor­ry­ing”.) If you fear that you will not have enough money to pay your rent, that is stress. If you worry that you may get fired, that is stress. If you think that you may receive a pro­mo­tion at work, that is also stress (even though this would be a good change). Whether the event is good or bad, imag­in­ing changes in your life is stressful.

Any­thing that causes CHANGE IN YOUR DAILY ROUTINE is stressful.

Any­thing that causes CHANGE IN YOUR BODY HEALTH is stressful.

IMAGINED CHANGES are just as stress­ful as real changes.

Let us look at sev­eral types of stress — ones that are so com­mon­place that you might not even real­ize that they are stressful.……

Emo­tional Stress

When argu­ments, dis­agree­ments, and con­flicts cause CHANGES in your per­sonal life — that is stress.

Ill­ness

Catch­ing a cold, break­ing an arm, a skin infec­tion, a sore back, are all CHANGES in your body condition.

Push­ing Your Body Too Hard

A major source of stress is over dri­ving your­self. If you are work­ing (or par­ty­ing) 16 hours a day, you will have reduced your avail­able time for rest. Sooner or later, the energy drain on your sys­tem will cause the body to fall behind in its repair work. There will not be enough time or energy for the body to fix bro­ken cells, or replace used up brain neu­ro­trans­mit­ters. CHANGES will occur in your body’s inter­nal envi­ron­ment. You will “hit the wall,” “run out of gas”. If you con­tinue, per­ma­nent dam­age may be done. The body’s fight to stay healthy in the face of the increased energy that your are expend­ing is major stress.

Envi­ron­men­tal Factors

Very hot or very cold cli­mates can be stress­ful. Very high alti­tude may be a stress. Tox­ins or poi­sons are a stress. Each of these fac­tors threat­ens to cause CHANGES in your body’s inter­nal environment.

The Spe­cial Case of Tobacco Use

Tobacco is a pow­er­ful toxin!! Smok­ing destroys cells that clean your tra­chea, bronchi, and lungs. Smok­ing causes emphy­sema and chronic bron­chi­tis, which progress to slow suf­fo­ca­tion. The car­bon monox­ide from cig­a­rette smok­ing causes chronic car­bon monox­ide poi­son­ing. Tobacco use dam­ages the arter­ies in your body, caus­ing insuf­fi­cient blood sup­ply to the brain, heart, and vital organs. Cig­a­rette smok­ing increases the risk of can­cer 50 fold.

Chew­ing tobacco or snuff is no safe haven. It also dam­ages your arter­ies, and it car­ries the same can­cer risk. (Can­cers of the head and neck are par­tic­u­larly vicious, dis­fig­ur­ing, and deadly).

Poi­son­ing the body with car­bon monox­ide, and caus­ing the phys­i­cal ill­nesses of emphy­sema, chronic bron­chi­tis, can­cer, and arte­r­ial dam­age, tobacco is a pow­er­ful source of added stress to one’s life.

Hor­monal Factors

PUBERTY

The vast hor­monal changes of puberty are severe stres­sors. A person’s body actu­ally CHANGES shape, sex­ual organs begin to func­tion, new hor­mones are released in large quan­ti­ties. Puberty, as we all know, is very stressful.

PRE-MENSTRUAL SYNDROME

Once a woman passes puberty, her body is designed to func­tion best in the pres­ence of female hor­mones. For women past puberty, a lack of female hor­mones is a major stress on the body. Once a month, just prior to men­stru­a­tion, a woman’s hor­mone lev­els drop sharply. In many women, the stress of sharply falling hor­mones is enough to cre­ate a tem­po­rary OVERSTRESS. This tem­po­rary OVERSTRESS is pop­u­larly known as Pre Men­stru­al­Syn­drome (PMS).

POST-PARTUM

Fol­low­ing a preg­nancy, hor­mone lev­els CHANGE dra­mat­i­cally. After a nor­mal child­birth, or a mis­car­riage, some women may be thrown into OVERSTRESS by loss of the hor­mones of pregnancy.

MENOPAUSE

There is another time in a woman’s life when hor­mone lev­els decline. This is the menopause. The decline in hor­mones dur­ing menopause is slow and steady. Nev­er­the­less, this menopausal decline causes enough stress on the body to pro­duce OVERSTRESS in many women.

Tak­ing Respon­si­bil­ity for Another Person’s Actions

When you take respon­si­bil­ity for another person’s actions, CHANGES occur in your life over which you have lit­tle or no con­trol. Tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for another person’s actions is a major stressor.

Aller­gic Stress

Aller­gic reac­tions are a part of your body’s nat­ural defense mech­a­nism. When con­fronted with a sub­stance which your body con­sid­ers toxic, your body will try to get rid of it, attack it, or some­how neu­tral­ize it. If it is some­thing that lands in your nose, you might get a runny, sneezy nose. If it lands on your skin, you might get blis­tery skin. If you inhale it, you’ll get wheezy lungs. If you eat it, you may break out in itchy red hives all over your body. Allergy is a def­i­nite stress, requir­ing large changes in energy expen­di­ture on the part of your body’s defense sys­tem to fight off what the body per­ceives as a dan­ger­ous attack by an out­side toxin.

On a typ­i­cal day in the brain, tril­lions of mes­sages are sent and received. The mes­sages that are happy, up beat mes­sages are car­ried by the brain’s “HAPPY MESSENGERS” (tech­ni­cally known as Bio­genic Amine/Endorphin Sys­tem). Other mes­sages are somber and qui­et­ing. They are car­ried by the brain’s “SAD MESSENGERS”. Most nerve cen­ters receive input from both types of mes­sen­gers. As long as this input is bal­anced, every­thing runs along on an even keel.

Stress, how­ever, causes prob­lems with the brain’s Happy Mes­sen­gers. When life is smooth, the happy mes­sages keep up with demand. But when too much stress is placed on the brain, the Happy Mes­sen­gers begin to fall behind on their deliv­er­ies. As the stress con­tin­ues, the happy mes­sages begin to fail. Impor­tant nerve cen­ters then receive mostly SAD MESSAGES, and the whole brain becomes dis­tressed. The per­son enters a state of brain chem­i­cal imbal­ance known as — OVERSTRESS.

OVERSTRESS makes peo­ple feel ter­ri­ble. With SAD MESSAGES over­whelm­ing the happy mes­sages, a per­son feels “over­whelmed” by life. Peo­ple com­plain of being tired, unable to fall asleep or to obtain a rest­ful night’s sleep. They have plagues of aches and pains, lack of energy, lack of enjoy­ment of life. They feel depressed, anx­ious, or just unable to cope with life.

Low Stress Tol­er­ance — The Inher­ited Factor

Every­one inher­its a cer­tain abil­ity to make and use Happy Mes­sen­gers in the brain. As long as you can make enough Happy Mes­sen­gers to keep up with the stress in your life, you will find stress to be fun, excit­ing, enjoy­able, chal­leng­ing. In fact, with­out it you would be bored.

How­ever, when the amount of stress in your life is so great that you begin to run out of Happy Mes­sen­gers, then bad things begin to hap­pen. You may have sleep dis­tur­bances, aches and pains, lack of enjoy­ment of life and even panic attacks.

The amount of stress that you can tol­er­ate before your Happy Mes­sen­gers mal­func­tion is referred to as your “Stress Tol­er­ance”. Your Stress Tol­er­ance is set by your genetic inher­i­tance. Most of us have inher­ited suf­fi­cient Stress Tol­er­ance to allow us to weather the stresses of daily liv­ing. We still feel well and enjoy life. Yet, each of us, at some time has expe­ri­enced short peri­ods of brain chem­i­cal imbalance.

The night you couldn’t sleep before your big test at school, or your impor­tant job inter­view, or your “fab­u­lous date”…

The sad­ness and cry­ing you may have felt when a friend or rel­a­tive passed away, or a girl­friend or boyfriend left…

The chest pains or the headaches that you may have thought were heart prob­lems or migraine, but your doc­tor said came from too much stress and strain…

WE HAVE ALL EXPERIENCED SUCH BRIEF EPISODES OF HAPPY MESSENGER MALFUNCTION. BUT, FULLY 10% OF OUR POPULATION FEELS LIKE THIS ALL OF THE TIME!

You see, one in ten per­sons has inher­ited a LOW STRESS TOLERANCE. This means that his/her Happy Mes­sen­gers “poop out” at stress lev­els which the rest of us would con­sider “nor­mal, every­day stress.” The result of inher­it­ing such a Low Stress Tol­er­ance may be a dis­as­ter. Such a per­son will be oper­at­ing his or her life in prac­ti­cally per­ma­nent OVERSTRESS. Sleep dis­tur­bances, aches and pains, fatigue, depres­sions, mood swings, anx­i­ety attacks, and even drug addic­tion can become life long problems.

Since one in ten per­sons have inher­ited a Low Stress Tol­er­ance, we are describ­ing an enor­mous num­ber of people.

Ten per­cent of your friends, your acquain­tances, your employ­ees, your co-workers, your employ­ers… every­where around you there are per­sons who are not able to cope with the stress of daily life.

To under­stand how stress results in this dis­as­trous con­di­tion for so many peo­ple, let us begin by exam­in­ing the brain’s HAPPY MESSENGERS.

There are three Happy Mes­sen­gers: SEROTONIN, NORADRENALIN, and DOPAMINE. These are the brain chem­i­cals that begin to mal­func­tion when stress lev­els become more than a per­son can handle.

Sero­tonin

SEROTONIN LETS YOU SLEEP

The Happy Mes­sen­ger, Sero­tonin, must work prop­erly in order for you to sleep well. Sero­tonin is respon­si­ble for mak­ing sure that your body’s phys­i­ol­ogy is set for sleep­ing. If Sero­tonin does not do its job prop­erly, you will not be able to obtain a rest­ful sleep, no mat­ter how hard you try.

SEROTONIN SETS YOUR BODY CLOCK

Inside every one of our brains is a very accu­rate “Clock”. This time keep­ing appa­ra­tus func­tions like the con­duc­tor of a sym­phony orches­tra. Just as the con­duc­tor of the orches­tra keeps all the var­i­ous instru­ments play­ing in rhythm, so the Body Clock keeps all the var­i­ous func­tions of your body coor­di­nated, and mov­ing to the same rhythm.

The Body Clock is located deep in the cen­ter of the brain, in a lit­tle group of cells known as the Pineal Gland. Within the Pineal Gland is a store-house of the mes­sen­ger Sero­tonin, which is the chem­i­cal “main­spring” of the Clock. Each day the Sero­tonin is chem­i­cally con­verted to a related com­pound, Mela­tonin; and then the Mela­tonin is con­verted right back to Sero­tonin. The whole cycle from Sero­tonin to Mela­tonin and back to Sero­tonin takes exactly 25 hours — and this forms your Body’s Clock.

Twenty five hours? Yes, under exper­i­men­tal con­di­tions of an unchang­ing envi­ron­ment, such as in a cave kept at a con­stant level of illu­mi­na­tion for weeks on end, this Body Clock cycles every 25 hours. If, how­ever, a per­son is exposed to a nat­ural out­door cycle of day­light and dark­ness, the Pineal Gland will auto­mat­i­cally set itself to a 24 hour day. That is, the Pineal Gland will auto­mat­i­cally match its cycle to the length of one Earth’s day. That way, noon in the Pineal Gland is always noon on Earth. If exposed to day­light, the Pineal Gland will nei­ther gain nor lose time, but will always cycle exactly in con­cert with the Earth as our planet twirls through space. The whole process of set­ting the Body Clock to Earth time takes about three weeks.

The 24 hour cycling of the Body Clock is impor­tant. It adjusts your body chem­istry for sleep­ing and for wak­ing. Every evening your Body Clock will set your phys­i­ol­ogy for sleep­ing; then you feel drowsy and sleep soundly. After a while, your Body Clock adjusts your phys­i­ol­ogy for wak­ing. You then wake up and feel refreshed.

We men­tioned that the Body Clock is the coor­di­na­tor of your phys­i­o­logic orches­tra. Three impor­tant play­ers in that orches­tra are your body tem­per­a­ture, stress fight­ing hor­mone, and sleep cycles. Each of these must be prop­erly coor­di­nated by the Body Clock in order for you to sleep soundly, and awake feel­ing rested.

THE BODY CLOCK AND YOUR BODY TEMPERATURE

Every 24 hours, your body tem­per­a­ture cycles from high to low, vary­ing by as much as one degree. When it is time to wake up and be active, your body tem­per­a­ture rises slightly. When it is time to fall asleep, your body tem­per­a­ture dips slightly. Most of us have felt how dif­fi­cult it is to fall asleep on a very warm night, when you toss and turn and wish you could cool off. Con­trast this with the rel­a­tive com­fort when one is tucked in a nice bed in a room that is slightly cool, or even down­right cold. To achieve the best sleep, the body ther­mo­stat is sup­posed to lower slightly at night, a tim­ing which is coor­di­nated by your Body Clock.

THE BODY CLOCK AND YOUR STRESS FIGHTING HORMONE

The body has a vital hor­mone called Cor­ti­sol, which is the body’s chief stress fight­ing hor­mone. When Cor­ti­sol secre­tion is high, the body shifts to a “war foot­ing”. It is pre­pared for stress con­di­tions such as hunger, trauma, hem­or­rhage, fight­ing, or run­ning. Ordi­nar­ily, one’s Cor­ti­sol drops sub­stan­tially in the evening, as one relaxes, set­tles down, and pre­pares for sleep.

As with body tem­per­a­ture, the ups and downs of your stress fight­ing hor­mone must cycle prop­erly dur­ing a 24 hour day for you to achieve a rest­ful night’s sleep and awake refreshed. Any dis­rup­tion of your Cor­ti­sol cycle, and rest­ful sleep will become very difficult.

THE BODY CLOCK AND YOUR SLEEP CYCLES

After falling asleep, one nor­mally goes DEEPER and DEEPER into sleep, finally reach­ing a state of deep restora­tive sleep. Then sleep becomes LIGHTER and LIGHTER until one enters dream­ing sleep. Then the whole cycle begins over again. About every 90 min­utes one goes through this cycle. In the early part of the evening the cycle pauses a rel­a­tively long time in the deep­est restora­tive phase. As the evening pro­gresses, the amount of time spent in deep restora­tive sleep lessens, and one spends more and more time dream­ing. In order for one to feel rested, this sleep pat­tern must be cycling prop­erly. And, of course, the cycle is reg­u­lated by your inter­nal Body Clock.

STRESS DESTROYS YOUR SLEEP

The Body Clock is essen­tial for the proper har­mony of your body tem­per­a­ture, stress fight­ing hor­mone, and sleep cycles. In order to fall asleep eas­ily, sleep soundly, and awake refreshed, your Body Clock must be func­tion­ing prop­erly. The Happy Mes­sen­ger, Sero­tonin, is the “main­spring” of the Body Clock. If stress causes Sero­tonin to fail, the Body Clock will stop work­ing. You will not be able to obtain a rest­ful sleep, no mat­ter how hard you try.

SINCE SEROTONIN IS USUALLY THE FIRST HAPPY MESSENGER TO FAIL UNDER STRESS, THE FIRST SIGN OF OVERSTRESS WILL USUALLY BE INABILITY TO OBTAIN A RESTFUL SLEEP.

Nora­dren­a­lin: Giv­ing Us Energy

I am sure you have all heard of “Adren­a­lin”. When you are fright­ened, Adren­a­lin is released into your blood stream by your adrenal glands. Your heart beats faster, blood flow is shunted away from your skin and intestines and towards your mus­cles. Per­spi­ra­tion appears on your palms and fore­head. You are ready for “fight or flight”. A cousin of Adren­a­lin, named Nora­dren­a­lin is one of the Happy Mes­sen­gers. Nora­dren­a­lin has many impor­tant func­tions in the body’s ner­vous sys­tem. The one that most con­cerns us here, how­ever, is the role of Nora­dren­a­lin in set­ting your energy lev­els. Proper func­tion­ing of Nora­dren­a­lin in the brain is essen­tial for you to feel ener­gized. With­out enough brain Nora­dren­a­lin you feel exhausted, tired, droopy and with­out energy. You just don’t feel like doing any­thing. You just wantto sit.

Peo­ple with Nora­dren­a­lin fail­ure become pro­gres­sively more and more lethar­gic. They do not seem to have any energy to do any­thing. Run­ning your brain with low Nora­dren­a­lin is akin to run­ning your car with a fail­ing bat­tery. Sooner or later, it just won’t start.

Dopamine: Your Plea­sure and Your Pain

As you prob­a­bly know, mor­phine and heroin are the most potent pain reliev­ing and plea­sure pro­duc­ing med­ica­tions known to man. They are so potent in fact, that they were long believed to mimic some unknown, but nat­u­rally occur­ring, body chem­i­cal. A recent tech­no­log­i­cal advance has led to the remark­able uncov­er­ing of nat­ural morphine-like mol­e­cules that are, indeed, made in each of our brains. Col­lec­tively, these sub­stances are known as ENDORPHINS, and they are respon­si­ble for reg­u­lat­ing our moment to moment aware­ness of pain.

It appears that in the dis­cov­ery of Endor­phins we have found our body’s nat­u­rally occur­ring mech­a­nism for reg­u­lat­ing pain. It is likely that a cer­tain base­line secre­tion of Endor­phin occurs at all times in the body. Under cer­tain con­di­tions, this Endor­phin secre­tion may rise, mak­ing the per­son rel­a­tively insen­si­tive to pain. Under other con­di­tions, the Endor­phin lev­els may drop, mak­ing a per­son more sen­si­tive than usual to pain.

Indi­vid­ual vari­a­tions of Endor­phin level would explain the obser­va­tion that peo­ple may react with dif­fer­ing lev­els of per­ceived pain when suf­fer­ing the same painful stim­u­lus. In med­ical prac­tice it is quite com­mon to see one per­son with an injury have very lit­tle dis­com­fort, while another per­son with a very sim­i­lar injury has ter­ri­ble dis­com­fort. In the past we have said that such unusual suf­fer­ing was “all in the person’s head”.

Now we may spec­u­late that what is dif­fer­ent in that person’s head is the Endor­phin level. Hence, the per­son who seems to have an unusual amount of dis­com­fort from what appears to be a triv­ial injury, prob­a­bly is feel­ing more pain. For some rea­son, his body’s own pain con­trol mech­a­nism has been depleted of Endorphins.

Now, our third Happy Mes­sen­ger, Dopamine, seems to be con­cen­trated in areas of the brain imme­di­ately adja­cent to where the major Endor­phin releas­ing mech­a­nisms lie. When Dopamine func­tion declines, Endor­phin func­tion also declines. Hence, when too much stress causes fail­ure of Dopamine func­tion, it also causes loss of your body’s nat­ural “pain killer”.

Dopamine also runs your body’s “Plea­sure Cen­ter”. This is the area of your brain that allows you to enjoy life. When stress inter­feres with your Dopamine func­tion, the Plea­sure Cen­ter becomes inop­er­a­tive. Nor­mally plea­sure­ful activ­i­ties no longer give any plea­sure. With severe Dopamine/Endorphin mal­func­tion, life becomes painful and devoid of any pleasure.

WHAT OVERSTRESS FEELS LIKE

When your stress level is high enough to cause fail­ure of your Happy Mes­sen­gers, what is going to hap­pen to you? What will you feel like?

If your total stress load is high enough to inter­fere with your brain’s Happy Mes­sen­gers, then your Body Clock is going to stop work­ing. You will find your­self hav­ing dif­fi­culty falling asleep, and fre­quent awak­en­ings dur­ing the night, per­haps with vivid dreams. When morn­ing rolls around, you will not feel at all rested.

Next, you will note lack of energy, lack of desire to get out and do things, lack of inter­est in the out­side world.

Next, you will have aches and pains. Par­tic­u­larly com­mon are chest, shoul­der, back and neck pains. But, it will seem like you are aware of vague, uncom­fort­able feel­ings from all over your body. Along with increased sen­si­tiv­ity to aches and pains, there is a decreased sense of plea­sure in life. Things that used to be fun or plea­sur­able do not seem enjoy­able anymore.

When all of these symp­toms coincide–lack of sleep, fatigue, aches and pains–you feel that life is not enjoy­able any­more. You feel over­whelmed by life. Now you may cry eas­ily, and feelthat you are “depressed”.

You may also feel quite anx­ious. All these strange changes in your body. Why can’t I sleep? Why do I ache all the time? Am I hav­ing a heart attack? What is hap­pen­ing to me? It is not uncom­mon for per­sons who are expe­ri­enc­ing the strange changes in their body caused by Happy Mes­sen­ger fail­ure to have peri­ods of panic. It is dur­ing these so-called “panic attacks” that you feel as if you can not catch your breath. The heart races in panic, the mus­cles ache and pain all over the chest. You may even get light-headed. You may have stom­ach upset and diar­rhea. Stress has caused your body to behave in strange and dif­fi­cult ways. Under these cir­cum­stances, anx­i­ety and fear are not at all unexpected.

All of us have expe­ri­enced some peri­ods of OVERSTRESS in our lives. Usu­ally they will be of short dura­tion. We live in such a high stress soci­ety, how­ever, that at least TEN PERCENT OF OUR POPULATION IS IN OVERSTRESS ALL THE TIME! These peo­ple, who have inher­ited a Low Stress Tol­er­ance, are fight­ing against Happy Mes­sen­ger fail­ure every day of their lives. It rarely stops; and they are sorely afflicted.

In the past, we did not know the cause of this suf­fer­ing. Such per­sons were often said to have a “men­tal ill­ness”. The med­ical world now rec­og­nizes these symp­toms to arise from a brain Happy Mes­sen­ger mal­func­tion. THIS MALFUNCTION IS CAUSED BY TOO MUCH STRESS.

What was once regarded as a men­tal ill­ness has emerged from that shad­owy realm to reside in the world of bio­chem­istry and phys­i­cal illness.