The Stress Response
Thanks to all of you who shared your thoughts on whether there is a link between stress and cancer – particularly Dr Elaine Schnatter whose contribution was so valuable. Today, I thought it might be helpful to take a closer look at what actually happens to our bodies when we are stressed.
The Stress Response
When we are confronted with a frightening situation, our “fight-or-flight” response – our body’s primitive, survival response to danger – is automatically triggered. This response which is hard-wired into our brains, mobilizes our body to “fight” or “flee” from a perceived threat.
Fight or Flight Response
- heart rate increases
- pupils dilate to take in as much light as possible
- blood-glucose level increases
- digestion shuts down to allow more energy for emergency functions
- chemicals like adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol are released into our bloodstream.
- blood is directed into our muscles and limbs, which require extra energy for running and fighting.
- sight sharpens and our awareness and impulses quicken
All of these physiological responses prepare us for fight or flight. This is just the response you need when faced with a sabre toothed tiger, but our perceived threats today are not always so life threatening. Nevertheless our fight or flight response is activated (sometimes on a daily basis) as if our physical survival depends on it. If we aren’t careful, we can become stuck in survival mode. Living from crisis to crisis, we flood our bodies with stress hormones which can lead to headaches, digestive problems, high blood pressure, depression and anxiety.
Are you stressed?
You may be so used to being stressed that you’re not even aware you are stressed. Stop for a moment and check in with your body.
- Are there any areas of tenseness or tightness in your body? Sore muscles? Tight stomach? Clenched teeth, shoulders, hands?
-
Observe your breath by placing one hand on your belly, the other on your chest. Watch your hands rise and fall with each breath. Is your breath shallow or deep?
Getting into the habit of paying attention to your body’s stress cues will help you know when it is time to intervene to reduce your body’s stress reaction.
What is your personal stress response?
While we all respond to stress with the physiological reactions listed above, we can manifest it outwardly in different ways. Which of the following best describes your normal reaction to stress?
- Overexcited stress response – irritable, overemotional, agitated
- Under excited stress response – depressed, withdrawn, shut down
- Frozen stress response – become frozen emotionally
Awareness of your own unique physical response to stress is an important part of knowing how to manage it. For now take note of what it is for you and later in the week we will explore ways you will best respond to stress relief activities, based on your own response to stress.
Please feel free to share your thoughts on the stress response and how it manifests in your life in the comments section below.
Marriage to my first husband was extremely stressful. Not just him, but his job, our lifestyle, even our vacations brought me to the edge of my ability to cope, but you would have never known that. My response was to cut off my highs and lows and live somewhere in the middle: I didn’t get too excited about anything or too sad, and I never panicked, even under the worst of conditions, and I never felt safe enough to let my guard down….. Hmmm… Think I have the beginning of a blog, here. Better get busy and write it…
XOXOXO,
Brenda
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I learn something new about you every day Brenda – I didn’t know you were married before James! Your response to this question I find very interesting…hope you follow up on it on your excellent blog.
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I’m with Marie. I had a similar experience with my former husband. I believe I could manifest both overexcited and underexcited stress responses, depending on the circumstances and the trigger. We had a workshop on stress reduction at the lymphedema conference in Dallas this past week. I actually fell asleep as the speaker hypnotized us with her gentle cadence of words. Thanks for addressing this critical topic. xx
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Thanks Jan for sharing your thoughts on this important topic
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Dr Muiris Heuston’s article in today’s Irish Times on the “battle with cancer” term is worth reading:
We need to fight military view of cancer
Tue, Sep 11, 2012
MEDICAL MATTERS: Having cancer is best described as a journey not a battle, writes MUIRIS HOUSTON
“I am not fighting or battling cancer – it is fighting me”
Christopher Hitchens
I CAME across this quote from the late Christopher Hitchens recently. It filled me with both hope and despair. As someone who feels strongly about the use of military metaphors in medicine, I was pleased at Hitchens’s no nonsense statement that he was not battling cancer, but disappointed that he felt the disease was fighting him.
Although it can be traced back centuries, the modern use of military terminology in medicine received a major boost when, in 1971, the then US President Richard Nixon publicly declared “war” on cancer and referred to it as a “relentless and insidious enemy”.
In a recent Personal View column in the British Medical Journal, Natasha Wiggins, a junior doctor working in oncology, offered some insightful views into the military conundrum.
“Since the days of Nixon’s war, advances in medical science have made it clear that cancer is not one but many enemies,” she wrote. “Indeed, the Pulitzer prize-winning oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee stated, ‘It is a puzzle, you cannot win a puzzle, you can only solve it’.”
Yet we read of the “collateral damage” of chemotherapy to describe the side effects of cancer treatments – a phrase defined as “the unintentional damage or incidental damage affecting facilities, equipment or personnel occurring as a result of military action directed against targeted enemy forces or facilities”.
Clearly military life cannot be distanced from the rest of the world, but do we really need terms like “killer cells” and “vaccine shots” when talking to patients?
Does a fighting spirit protect you against a cancer recurrence? A large UK study suggests it does not: a long-term follow-up of cancer patients at the Royal Marsden Hospital found that a high fighting spirit confers no survival advantage on those who displayed such fortitude.
Wiggins asks: “Are people with aggressive or advanced disease fighting less hard? This “fighting” involves loss of dignity, changing personality and feeling awful. Is there any less courage in facing your fate?
Has someone “given up the fight” if they make an informed choice to decline treatment based on the risks and benefits?”
I think we owe it to the many patients who choose this different route, and others, to rethink our use of language.
We need to find alternative references that don’t explicitly imply such pressure to be positive about the diagnosis, or to fight the disease.
It’s not that we want to lose metaphors in our language around cancer. Provided they are neither sugar-coated nor brutal, metaphors are good.
Metaphors can be vital to the explanation of a disease process because it enables communication of complex theories to someone who may have little scientific knowledge.
Gentler metaphors are vital for those who are feeling overwhelmed, depressed or are simply of a meek disposition.
They may be neither inclined nor able to respond to exhortations to fight back. And unable to respond, it is possible that certain people will feel they have “failed” themselves and their families.
So how can we replace the “battling” concept?
Wiggins offers a somewhat romantic example from a play about mouth cancer: “Death came and gave me a flower, he asked me to hold it in my mouth, he said he would be back for it in six months.”
An alternative approach may be to view the process as a journey. There will be bumps along the road; some parts will be downhill while others will take more effort. The journey will offer alternative routes and it may be appropriate at times to rest for a while.
It must be hard to prepare for the loss of control that having cancer can cause. Your body is changing; the “certainties” of your future life must now be questioned. It is no wonder many people say that they feel better with an understanding of what is happening to them.
We need to fight military view of cancer
Tue, Sep 11, 2012
MEDICAL MATTERS: Having cancer is best described as a journey not a battle, writes MUIRIS HOUSTON
“I am not fighting or battling cancer – it is fighting me”
Christopher Hitchens
I CAME across this quote from the late Christopher Hitchens recently. It filled me with both hope and despair. As someone who feels strongly about the use of military metaphors in medicine, I was pleased at Hitchens’s no nonsense statement that he was not battling cancer, but disappointed that he felt the disease was fighting him.
Although it can be traced back centuries, the modern use of military terminology in medicine received a major boost when, in 1971, the then US President Richard Nixon publicly declared “war” on cancer and referred to it as a “relentless and insidious enemy”.
In a recent Personal View column in the British Medical Journal, Natasha Wiggins, a junior doctor working in oncology, offered some insightful views into the military conundrum.
“Since the days of Nixon’s war, advances in medical science have made it clear that cancer is not one but many enemies,” she wrote. “Indeed, the Pulitzer prize-winning oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee stated, ‘It is a puzzle, you cannot win a puzzle, you can only solve it’.”
Yet we read of the “collateral damage” of chemotherapy to describe the side effects of cancer treatments – a phrase defined as “the unintentional damage or incidental damage affecting facilities, equipment or personnel occurring as a result of military action directed against targeted enemy forces or facilities”.
Clearly military life cannot be distanced from the rest of the world, but do we really need terms like “killer cells” and “vaccine shots” when talking to patients?
Does a fighting spirit protect you against a cancer recurrence? A large UK study suggests it does not: a long-term follow-up of cancer patients at the Royal Marsden Hospital found that a high fighting spirit confers no survival advantage on those who displayed such fortitude.
Wiggins asks: “Are people with aggressive or advanced disease fighting less hard? This “fighting” involves loss of dignity, changing personality and feeling awful. Is there any less courage in facing your fate?
Has someone “given up the fight” if they make an informed choice to decline treatment based on the risks and benefits?”
I think we owe it to the many patients who choose this different route, and others, to rethink our use of language.
We need to find alternative references that don’t explicitly imply such pressure to be positive about the diagnosis, or to fight the disease.
It’s not that we want to lose metaphors in our language around cancer. Provided they are neither sugar-coated nor brutal, metaphors are good.
Metaphors can be vital to the explanation of a disease process because it enables communication of complex theories to someone who may have little scientific knowledge.
Gentler metaphors are vital for those who are feeling overwhelmed, depressed or are simply of a meek disposition.
They may be neither inclined nor able to respond to exhortations to fight back. And unable to respond, it is possible that certain people will feel they have “failed” themselves and their families.
So how can we replace the “battling” concept?
Wiggins offers a somewhat romantic example from a play about mouth cancer: “Death came and gave me a flower, he asked me to hold it in my mouth, he said he would be back for it in six months.”
An alternative approach may be to view the process as a journey. There will be bumps along the road; some parts will be downhill while others will take more effort. The journey will offer alternative routes and it may be appropriate at times to rest for a while.
It must be hard to prepare for the loss of control that having cancer can cause. Your body is changing; the “certainties” of your future life must now be questioned. It is no wonder many people say that they feel better with an understanding of what is happening to them.
But this understanding is so much harder to achieve with the label “my battle with cancer” written across a patient’s forehead.
© 2012 The Irish Times
But this understanding is so much harder to achieve with the label “my battle with cancer”
© 2012 The Irish Times
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Thanks Deirdre, I read it and left a comment online. It is certainly something many of us feel strongly about
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