UI was listening to the speech of Kelly McGonigal in https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend. Frankly, I haven't come across anyone in the real world who had not talked about stress with me. I was told by the physicians that I got blood pressure in 1995 due to work related stress. Till today, I have not experienced or felt stress in my life other than hearing about it either from my physician or from the family and friends. Kelly's talk made me smile as she categorically declared that the one who is aware of the stress is most likely to get affected by the health issues. It is very satisfying to know that stress is the way the body prepares the human beings to handle a situation/challenge. If this is true, why the stress has a wrong connotation in the real world and people talk negatively about it? We need to be mindful, stress is the body's reaction to the challenges we face and hence helpful and not hurtful. Being mindful of that changes our health. Kelly also says that stress makes a person becomes social. Whenever, a person is in stress, oxytocin, a neuro-harmone (otherwise known as cuddle hormone) is released. It is known as cuddle hormone because that is secreted when we cuddle someone else. It enhances our empathy. It even makes us more willing to help and support the people we care about. Instead of sweating about the stressful life, why not we seek help from our circle or even help those who need help? Doesn't it make us healthier? It looks like oxytocin is secreted to keep our cardiovascular health in tact and act as anti-inflammatory. It helps the blood vessels to stay relaxed during stress. If the recipe for stress release is the company of the family and friends and helping others, what are we waiting for? I appreciate the effort of Kelly to educate so many of us how not to sweat and instead energize ourselves to handle situations using the stress. This perhaps is one of the best things I have learned in my life and I thought it is worth sharing with ILites. Please share your stressful situations and what helped you overcome those situations. Let us all share how the company of people who we love helps overcome stress. Can unconditional love for fellow beings become a stress buster? What is the reason why people help fellow-beings unconditionally when they are themselves at risk? Why people who lost their houses helped others who were hurting in recent Chennai floods? Please share your thoughts. Let us work together to be mindful of stress as a tool to handle challenges. Viswa
Nice write up Viswa! I haven't had time to view the TED talk yet but I remembered a similar one by Dr Robert Sapolsky, a neuroendocrinologist at Standford. The talk touches on stress and it's impact on the social behavior of primates. It's quite entertaining -- https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_sapolsky_the_uniqueness_of_humans From my limited understanding of this subject, stress was originally an endocrine response to threat in our environments. When our cave-dweller ancestors faced a predator, stress (rapid release of cortisol and adrenaline, increase of blood pressure) allowed us to focus all our energy into surviving. However this adaptation was intended to operate in short bursts during life-threatening situations. Our modern life subjects us to chronic long-term stress. Stress was not supposed to be a long-term persistent state. When we face chronic stress, our bodies take a lot of damage. Persistent state of hypertension, shut down of reproductive systems, rapid aging of chromosomes, all of which eventually shorten our life spans. When we are under stress, our cave man brains think that our survival is at stake, and they shut down or limit important bodily functions like reproduction and the immune system. The brain thinks that you will soon be out of stress and everything will go back to normal. It makes sense that when your survival is at stake, reproduction can wait. This is why doctors advise women who are trying to conceive to reduce stress. But our 21st century world keeps us in near constant stress, something we weren't designed to handle. This is where mindfulness comes in. Focusing, almost obsessively, on the now, living in the moment is one of the best ways to eliminate stress. More on this after I view the Kelly TED talk.
@Gauri03, Nice perspective of stress with specifics of how the physicians advice women not to be stressed when they are trying to conceive. It makes perfect sense. Constant stressful condition certainly has a serious impact in health just like any other extraordinary secretion could cause health issues. However, Kelly's argument is Oxytocin is the same neuro-harmone that gets released during stress that is also secreted when we cuddle people or reach out with love. She is in a subtle way communicating in this speech that stress is telling us to share the issue with others to reduce the burden. Besides, she is suggesting to use release of Oxytocin as an essential need to handle challenges and hence not consider stress as a negative reaction harmful to the body. In simple terms, she is saying that those who consider stress as negative are more likely to have health issues than looking at it as an essential reaction to handle challenges. This appears to be a paradigm shift in how we look at stress and when you get a chance, kindly review this talk that might be very useful. Viswa
