Anti-Stress Nutritional Program

Anti-Stress Nutritional Program

BY Elson M. Haas M.D.

In the future, stress may come to be seen as the primary contributing cause of most disease. Research continues to link stress to more and more symptoms and diseases, both acute and chronic. Stress is inevitable in today’s world and, of course, we need a certain amount to function. The key is to be able to manage our level of stress.

What is stress? It is our reaction to our external environment as well as our inner thoughts and feelings. Stress in essence is our body’s natural response to dangers, the "fight or flight" mechanisms—the body’s preparedness to do battle or flee from danger. This response involves a complex biochemical-hormonal process, which we will discuss shortly.

Stress in today’s world is mainly a result of continuous high demands that are imposed on us by work, family, and lifestyle, or that we impose upon ourselves through our desire to accomplish. Mild stress acts as a useful motivation for activity and productivity. But when the stresses in our life are too extreme or too many, this may result in all kinds of problems. Some people consistently overreact to their day-to-day life. However, most of us might be overwhelmed only when we have an increased intensity or number of stresses, such as excessive demands all at once leading to a continuous feeling of not having enough time or energy to do what we feel we must do. Others respond stressfully to intense emotional experiences, personal changes, extreme weather, or overexposure to electronic stimuli, all of which can weaken us.

Stress can generate many symptoms and diseases, mediated by changes in immune function, hormonal response, and biochemical reactions, which then influence body functions in our digestive tract and our cardiovascular, neurological, or musculoskeletal systems. A wide variety of problems such as headache, backache, and infection, even heart disease or cancer in the long-term, may result.

Our brain and pituitary gland respond to stress by releasing adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). This stimulates our adrenals to increase production of the hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. Other hormones that affect metabolism and water balance may also be released. Epinephrine and norepinephrine, known as the adrenalines or catecholamines, are the main stimuli to the stress response. They stimulate the heart, increase blood pressure and heart rate, and constrict certain blood vessels to increase blood flow to the muscles and brain and to decrease it to the digestive tract and internal organs, preparing us for the "battle" with the "danger," wherever it is. Adrenaline also raises blood sugar, as it stimulates the liver to produce and release more glucose (and cholesterol) into the blood so our cells will have the energy we need. All of this results in an increased rate of metabolism. Stress experienced around the time of eating thus diverts the energy needed for efficient digestion.

During times of increased stress and greater demand, our body’s nutrients are used more rapidly to meet the increased biochemical needs of metabolism, so we require increased amounts of many of these nutrients. The diet and nutrient plan presented here is specifically designed to reduce these negative biochemical effects of stress. There are also many other important aspects of handling this modern-day problem, primarily psychological and lifestyle approaches to stress management. Soon, there will be a medical specialty designed to deal solely with stress-induced diseases. In fact, most specialties now have some set of symptoms or a diagnosis in their field of expertise related to these psycho-emotional/stress-induced diseases. The problem is that most doctors are not trained to do more than diagnose them, and often these diagnoses, such as "irritable bowel" or "spastic colon," tension headaches, or neurogenic bladder disease, are made primarily by excluding the "real diseases." Often, only tranquilizers, psychotherapy, or biofeedback are available in most circles of medicine, and this approach may be limited. There is a lot more that each of us can do to better manage our stress.

Who will benefit from this Anti-Stress program? It is mainly for those who are routinely subjected to high demands, particularly mental demands, and who suffer from "intellectual performance anxiety." People in this group are mostly office workers, people who must sit and be productive for eight to ten hours a day with little physical outlet, such as the executive or office worker, although they also might be salespeople, flight attendants, mechanics, nurses, or journalists. The Anti-Stress program is also suitable for people undergoing short-term periods of increased stress because of personal changes or other events that increase energy demands, such as divorce or marriage, death of a loved one, relocation, job change, or travel.

Many of the conditions discussed in this chapter are related in some way to stress—for example, athletes experience extra physical stress and executives experience more mental stress; stress is also a factor in the aging process. Stress can occur at all levels of our being. There are physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual stress factors involved in almost all diseases. Particular medical conditions that have a high stress component include asthma and allergies, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal diseases, arthritis, and cancer. Surgery, viral conditions, and environmental chemical exposure may be short-term problems with high stress components. Thus, aspects of this program may apply to many of the other programs. Check other discussions as they may tie into your particular concerns.