what is the deal with stress?

It seems that all chronic illnesses have some connection with stress. Maybe stress isn't the main cause of an illness, but it is a huge factor that contributes to it. The last disease I just read about in When the Body Says No was Crohn's disease, which is often located in the colon and ileum. Martha is one of Dr. Mate's patients who has Crohn's disease and I am shocked she didn't die of stress. She was intimidated by her own husband (who also cheats on her), had to have her two older kids to take care of the youngest one and was living in a town she hated. How does anyone survive living like that?

This is a very good website about Crohn's disease: http://www.ccfc.ca/. I researched this website and it made me realize how much I have learnt in Biology 12 and Health Science 12. It seems like an obvious fact that the small intestine does the most absorption and digestion, but generally, everyone thinks that the stomach does everything. Well, that's what I thought until I took Biology 12. Anyways, the website tries to answer the question, "Does stress cause IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease)?" The answer they give is no. However, stress can aggravate and initiate a flare up in the infection. "Cause" is a very confusing word in this book because Dr. Mate flips around about whether a disease is affected or caused or impacted by stress - what's the difference??!! Well finally, Dr. Mate defines "cause" in relation to disease in a very clear way:

"If A causes B, then every time A is present, B should follow. If B does not follow A consistently, then A cannot, by itself, be the cause of B - even if, in most cases, it might be a major and perhaps necessary contributing factor. If smoking caused lung cancer, every smoker would develop the disease."

So in my own words, smoking does not CAUSE lung cancer, but it increases your risk. Just like stress does not CAUSE all of these diseases, but it increases your risk.

The importance of parenting

I never knew parenting was so important until I read Betty Krawczyk's story. I also never knew how famous Betty was until reading about her in Dr. Gabor Mate's book, When the Body Says No. I learnt that Betty is very well known in BC because of her environmental and political protesting. I believe this protesting relates to her childhood; she was an independent child growing up and the only one who could stand up to her abusive father. I believe she thought she could stand up to anyone if she could stand up to her scary father who she had night mares about. Betty ended up leaving home early, had four husbands and eight children. Her last husband gained custody of all her children but one - Barbara Ellen. Barbara Ellen was born and raised by Betty and didn't have the best life either. As a young adult, Barbara became addicted to narcotic painkillers and tranquilizers, right up until she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 27. Betty feels like her stressful life was passed down to cause Barbara a stressful life, which I entirely agree with. Barbara went from relationship to relationship very quickly because she couldn't stand to be alone. You can see a pattern forming from one generation to another, which is really sad because if they could have received psychological help, it could have saved Barbara's life.

What really interested me, was the fact that Barbara had to ask her mom's permission to die. If they didn't have a very strong relationship, than why was it so important for Barbara to have this permission to finally let go? Well, Dr. Mate explains that Barbara and Betty had a strong relationship, it is just hidden. When Barbara was born, Betty was "emotional needy and exhausted". Therefore, Barbara matured way before she should have in order to maintain the relationship. It is the parent's job to take care of their kids - not the other way around. Barbara would hide things from her mother, in order to protect her and Barbara felt like she had to keep protecting her mother, until she felt like she could leave her by herself. Dr. Mate says that the people he sees with cancers and all these conditions. have difficulty saying no and expressing anger. In the last 6 months of her life, Barbara was beginning to say no and let her frustration out. She let out frustration with her mother and life in general. Unfortunately, it was too late and Barbara died in the hospital bed with her mother by her side.

I have attached a link to Betty Krawczyk's blog, where she talks about environmental and political concerns. Betty is also the author of a book called, Clayoquot.

http://bettysearlyedition.blogspot.com/

What being a good doctor means

Breast cancer is a widely known disease that affects millions across the world. Dr. Mate debates whether breast cancer is caused by stress or not. Some women with breast cancer are blaming their stress load earlier in their life for the condition they have to suffer with now. For example, Michelle grew up in a home with two alcoholics as parents and believes her cancer has a relation with all of the confusion in her life - she never knew if her parents loved her or not and she was always caring about other people's emotional needs rather than her own. Dr. Mate never does reveal whether stress is related to cancer diagnoses, though he does mention a five-year study done on more than 500 women and the results showed that, "women with breast cancer need not fear that stressful experiences will precipitate a return of their disease." At least we know that breast cancer will most likely not return from high stress.

A good point Dr. Mate brings up is that it seems like doctors now a days don't think that connecting with their patients lives is important. That means wondering why someone is so stressed out, or what is going on in their personal lives at all. Of course if the patient does not want to reveal anything about what their life is like, than they should not feel pressured to do so. Though, I do think our personal lives have an impact on our life and how we deal with things and I would like to know that I could go to a doctor to help me through something if I really needed it. First responders are an excellent example of how connecting with a patient can be crucial. I remember talking about how our sympathetic nervous system causes our fight or flight response and then our parasympathetic system brings our nervous system back to normal. When the parasympathetic system brings it down too much, we go into shock. When someone is in shock, it is crucial that whoever is there, is talking to them, calming them down and wanting to hear about their story. I believe that sometimes doctors are too caught up in facts and knowledge when the answer to a diagnoses could be found by learning about someone's history.

ALS - Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

I couldn't stop reading about Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) because I had never heard of it before and to try and imagine the things Dr. Mate explained actually happening in our body was slightly horrifying. For example, the condition is caused when motor neurons in the CNS start to gradually die. When there are less neuron synapses and impulses, the muscles wither. That is why patients with ALS have troubles grasping objects, speaking, or walking, depending on where in the spinal cord or brain that is affected. According to the website that I attached below, eighty percent of people diagnosed with ALS die within 2-5 years after diagnosis, usually because they are unable to breathe or swallow. Another astonishing statistic I found from the ALS Society of Canada website was that approximately 2,500 - 3,000 Canadians currently live with ALS.

Dr. Mate talks specifically about a patient, Alexa, who pushed herself way beyond her limits. She would stay up long after midnight to complete her daily marking of student assignments (because the small muscles in her hand shriveled up). Then get up at five-thirty in order to arrive to work on time. Dr. Mate also talks about her early life and how no matter how hard she tried, she could not manage to establish a connection with her adoptive mother. Alexa had an overwhelming fear of abandonment ever since, which showed through her first and second marriages. How does this connect to her condition? First of all, she grew up feeling like she had to take care of everybody and she also developed an inability to express her emotions. Not being able to express her emotions, made her bottle up everything she felt inside. It is hard to imagine what that kind of stress does to your body, though I know it is not a healthy way to deal with issues. Alexa and her husband wanted Dr. Mate to support their belief that her symptoms were purely stress related, though Dr. Mate knew that the diagnoses was "irrefutable". It is unknown what causes ALS, though a study done at Yale University showed two patterns in ALS patients.

1. Rigidly competent behaviour - the inability to ask for or receive help

2. Chronic exclusion of so -called negative feelings

They found these patterns within the ten patients that they studied, though all of the patients appeared cheerful on the outside. That makes me sad to think about because they are trying so hard to make the world a nicer place by not polluting it with their own sadness and then get punished with a horrible disease. I guess the moral of the story is that no ones sadness or frustrations deserve to be bottled up and there should be at least one person that is willing to listen.

For more information about ALS:

http://www.als.ca/

Three components of stress

I have never thought about stress having different parts; I have always thought about stress as this massive black cloud that makes thinking straight and smiling a very hard thing to do. Dr. Mate breaks this cloud into three components:

Stressor - physical or emotional event that an organism interprets as threatening.

Processing system - the nervous system (brain)

Stress response - physiological and behavioral reactions to a perceived threat.

I found this interesting because I believe that we can control our stress response to a certain point, but how far is that point? Because sometimes I try and not stress about something because there is no benefit to stressing about this stressor, though then I stress about the damage I am doing to my body because I am stressing too much. It is like an on-going cycle that few understand how to control. Of course there are methods, such as yoga, going for a run, meditating, but what if I don't have time or don't know how to get involved with those things? Well, I think the next time I am stressed about something I will think about it as a challenge - a challenge to overcome this threat. Maybe there is no right way to overcome stress, maybe everyone needs to figure out their own way to dealing with it and believe that their way is going to work.

Dr. Mate tells a story of how one of his patients, Alan, deals with his diagnoses of cancer. Alan believes that his "bad stress" is what caused the cancer in his esophagus and stomach. He is frustrated with his 10-year marriage and blames his wife's inability to be romantic and intimate to be the cause - "her problems were at their absolute peak at the point I got cancer." I do not believe that his wife was the absolute cause of his cancer, but I do believe that it made his condition worse. Maybe if he had been able to have a closer relationship with his wife, he might have told her that he has been suffering indigestion and heartburn for a long time. Heartburn is caused by chronic reflux, which results in a faulty esophageal sphincter. It is also a fact that excessive acid production due to stress and disordered neural input from the autonomic nervous sytem also play a role in reflux. Therefore, the more stressed Alan was, the more acid was being produced, and the more chronic reflux he experienced.

To learn more about how to deal with stress:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/

Is multiple sclerosis caused by stress?

One of Dr. Mate's patients, Natalie, is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in chapter two. She was diagnosed by a MRI showing inflammation where myelin in the central nervous system was damaged and scarred. I have attached two pictures as examples of MRIs of MS. The red arrow on the picture to the left is pointing to a spot of myelin loss in the spinal cord. We actually talked about MS during the nervous system unit and how the fatty tissue lining nerve cells in the CNS are less effective because of the damage - resulting in damaged neurons. For some reason, I always thought MS was always in the brain, though the main areas attacked are usually the spinal cord. This makes sense because usually people with MS have troubles walking. My great uncle has MS and he has been unstable walking for as long as i've known him.

Dr. Mate also talks about the symptoms of MS:

if damage is in the spinal cord - involuntary tightening/weakness of muscles, numbness, pain or other unpleasant sensations in the limbs or trunk.

if damage is in the lower part of the brain - double vision or problems with speech or balance is caused.

I think these symptoms are important to know in case you or someone you know experiences some of these things as multiple sclerosis is extremely common. I learnt from the website attached below that about 400,000 people in the USA have multiple sclerosis.

So is multiple sclerosis caused by stress? This question is not answered entirely, but Dr. Mate mentions a study done in Colorado. Their results shows that, "patients burdened by qualitatively extreme stresses, such as major relationship difficulties or financial insecurity, were almost four times as likely to suffer exacerbations [episodes]".

For more information about multiple sclerosis:

http://mssociety.ca/en/information/default.htm

what is stress?

Dr. Gabor Mate defines stress as, "a complicated cascade of physical and biochemical responses to powerful emotional stimuli". Even though it sounds very scientific, his definition does make sense. I strongly agree that stress is very complicated, as most people have no idea where it comes from. One thing I would like to learn more about stress is: what part of our bodies determines how we deal with stress and why certain people never deal with it at all?

This site helped me understand both questions: http://helpguide.org/mental/stress_signs.htm. It specifically talks about two hormones cortisol and adrenaline which we learned about during the endocrine system! These hormones cause our blood to pump faster, our muscles to tighten, and our breathing to quicken. All of these factors help us react to an emergency situation. I like how this site talks about two different views on stress. There is the beneficial stress that can save your life in an emergency or get you through an intimidating interview. And then beyond a point, there is the dangerous stress that can seriously damage your health. One way dangerous stress is caused is by not saying no.

Dr. Mate talks about how most of his patients never learned to say no. "Saying no" means not saying no to the things that make your life miserable. For example, Dr. Mate gives an example of a patient who insisted of eating disgusting shark cartilage so that he would not disappoint his business partner. I am amazed at how the man didn't say no, even when he knew he only had a few more days to live.