The First Law of Wellness: Calm the Turbulence

Read the prelude to the Laws of Wellness: The Four Dimensions of Wellness

The first law of wellness is to Calm the Turbulence. By “turbulence,” I mean chronic psychological stress.

Chronic stress is much different than acute stress. Acute stress is our natural reaction to danger. Like other mammals, we have evolved to be constantly on guard for possible external threats. And when we perceive a threat, our body reacts immediately. This reaction is called the stress response.

For example, suppose you’re hiking in the woods and see a bear on the trail in front of you. Your body immediately responds by pumping a host of hormones into your blood. These hormones cause a number of physiological reactions. Your heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate increase. Your cells pump out extra energy. Your sensory acuity increases. Other physiological changes also take place. This stress response to perceived threat is natural. It helps you prepare for a dangerous situation very quickly. Once the danger has passed—once the bear sees that you’re wearing a Batman T-shirt and runs away—your body returns to its normal state.

Chronic stress is different. Chronic stress can develop from continually worrying about finances, relationships, health, or countless other life issues. In today’s world, we may feel under stress from the time we get up in the morning until we lay our heads down at night.

It starts in the morning with finding you’re out of your favorite cereal. Then you get stuck in traffic and arrive late to work. You find your computer is down. The gal in the cubicle down the hall says something snide to you. At lunch, your order is late. The meat loaf is cold. Back at the office, phone calls keep interrupting your work. You have to stay late to finish up. You get stuck in traffic again on the way home. You arrive at 8:30. The kids are irritable. Dinner is cold. Having felt stress almost constantly throughout the day, you just want to go to bed.

The Toll of Chronic Stress

The problem with chronic stress is that the stress response occurs again and again, sometimes without letup. Your body doesn’t return to its normal state. The extra hormones—such as cortisol, catecholamines, and vasopressin—continue circulating in your blood, gradually doing damage.

The excess cortisol suppresses the immune system, which is so crucial to fighting off bodily threats such as dangerous bacteria and cancer.

Both cortisol and catecholamines contribute to type 2 diabetes by elevating blood glucose levels.

Catecholamines and vasopressin increase blood pressure, which increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.

In addition to overproducing stress hormones, psychological stress increases the activation of blood platelets, which play an important role in the evolution of atherosclerotic plaques and the arterial clotting that leads to myocardial infarctions and strokes. Research also shows that chronic stress increases the risk of asthma, gastrointestinal disorders, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer.

In a word, over time, chronic stress can be a killer.

Chronic stress also takes a large toll in the other three dimensions of our lives. It decreases our enjoyment of life. It interferes with our problem-solving abilities. It can impair our social relationships and detract from the spiritual dimension of our lives. It has been called “the ailment of our time.” Its prevalence in today’s society and the damage it does to our lives is why Calm the Turbulence is one of the Seven Laws of Wellness. In today’s world, it is crucial to learn strategies for dealing successfully with chronic stress so we can stay calm in stormy seas.

Two Strategies for Dealing with Chronic Stress

There are two basic ways to deal with psychological turbulence. The first is to change the situation that causes the stress—the stressor. For example, if your job constantly drives you up the wall, one solution would be to find a less stressful job. Or if you’re anxious about the possibility of having a heart attack, you could work with your physician on a get-healthy plan to reduce that possibility. Or course, as a doctor myself, I highly recommend this general strategy for any health issues that you may be concerned about.

Sometimes, though, it’s not easy to change the stressor. But what you can change is your reaction to stressors. There are two main ways to do this. One is to reframe the stressor. This technique rests on the idea that something is a stressor only in a perceived context. For example, being in a traffic jam is not itself a reason to become upset. But if you perceive that being stuck in traffic will make you late for a meeting, which might harm your prospects for promotion, your hormones may start pouring out. You can defuse this reaction by changing your perception of your situation. For example, you can realize that it makes no sense to stress out about something you can’t control. The continuing stress reaction only jumbles your thoughts. But if you calm down, you can start thinking productively about how to counteract any negative results of being caught in the traffic.

A second way to change how you react to stressors is to find activities that promote calmness and resilience.

Meditation can be an effective calming practice. You don’t have to be religious to meditate. Meditation can simply be a way to calm your mind and your body. When you complete the meditation, you are more relaxed and better able to deal with situations without getting stressed-out. This is the relaxation response that Doctor Herbert Benson of Massachusetts General Hospital has studied and written about for many years. The relaxation response reverses the stress response by normalizing the body’s physiology.

Meditation is easy to learn. Daily meditation for 15 to 30 minutes in the morning can be a wonderful investment by helping you reduce stressful feelings throughout the day. Other stress-reducing practices include mini-meditations that take only a minute or two, mindfulness meditation, which can be done while you are walking, vacuuming the floor, brushing your teeth, or just about any time it won’t get in the way of whatever activity you are engaged in.

You can find information on how to go about any of these meditative techniques on my website at drrajivparti.us. But there are also important non-meditation strategies that you can use to counteract stress. These include good old-fashioned exercise, going for a walk in a park or out in nature, taking up a relaxing hobby such as woodworking or coin collecting.

Any of these methods can help you do the very important job of Calming the Turbulence.

Written by Dr. Rajiv Parti

Rajiv Parti, M.D., who earned his medical degree in India and completed residencies in pediatrics and anesthesiology in U.S. hospitals, became a board-certified staff anesthesiologist at several hospitals in Bakersfield, California, starting in 1993. After becoming director of advanced pain medicine at Heart Hospital, he founded the Pain Institute of California in 2003. Dr. Parti has also studied life coaching at the Coach Training Institute in San Rafael, California. It takes someone like Dr. Rajiv Parti, a brilliant, highly successful anesthesiologist who specialized in treating pain, to tell the truth about it. After suffering from a series of debilitating, nearly fatal illnesses that started in 2008, Dr. Parti realized he was addicted to painkillers. In 2011, he made the profoundly difficult but ethical choice to give up his practice, to conquer his addiction, and to search for a real solution. Soon he realized that his pain was not just physical but deeply emotional, psychological, and spiritual. That led him to Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India where he had been born. By becoming a student of that ancient holistic, natural practice, which he combined with meditation and yoga, Dr. Parti was able to regain control of his life with a new focus: to share his personal journey through pain to forgiveness, love, and healing.