Reducing Stress To Fight Inflammaging

It’s unique in that unlike almost all the other factors, stress begins in our minds. For example, an unconscious person, like in a coma, has very little mental stress and similar to inflammation. Our body’s acute stress reaction can be healthy and can be important for survival. For example, like when a lion attacks, we experience stress, but that helps us survive the attack and, and get away if necessary. But like inflammation, what is unhealthy is the chronic or long term activation of stress or constant stress? Sort of like waiting for the lion attack? That never comes. Some things can help with stress. Simple things that I use like pausing during the day just to take a breath, a deep breath. For example, this act of breathing actually stimulates one of the important nerves in our body, the vagus nerves that drives our autonomic nerve system to relax and decrease stress. One thing I found valuable, perhaps most of all in stress is to conceptualize it or remember that stress is not just what happens in our lives because we can’t control what happens in our lives. 

But stress is also a result of how we react to what happens in our lives. There’s a great quote from Anthony de Mello. I often remember it’s quote “To a disciple who is forever complaining about others. The master said, if it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth.” Well, with that in mind, we can think about that. The same event can be stressful to one person and literally joyful to another person depending on the meaning that we give it. In other words, how we react to the event in our lives can either generate stress or it can generate joy. What do we mean by that? For example, having surgery to remove a kidney for cancer is very stressful. On the other hand, you can have the exact same surgery to remove a kidney for, let’s say, donation to save the life of a family member or a total stranger with a kidney transplant. That could be a joyful experience. How we react to the events is also tied into this is how we conceptualize our purpose. Having a purpose in our lives, reduces stress and makes us healthier and live longer. 

My friend, Dr. Mark Hyman beautifully said about purpose that we should find something in our lives that is worth dying for and then live for it. And that is purpose one final way to reduce stress. That I use is to try, like I said, to change the meaning we give to events in our lives. And this approach now is through cultivating something called awareness or mindfulness. And this can be very valuable to limit stress. And this is often done with some sort of mindfulness or meditative practice. And there are, there are like so many things, there are many, many apps that are available on the internet. Many of them are free or at very low cost. They work from your smartphone. They can give you coaching tips about meditation or mindfulness and, just these things about limiting stress and they each take a different approach. The best approach though is the one that resonates for you. The one that works for you. And here are a few, they’re all good ones. These are three, that particular ones I like, I happen to be enjoying the Sam Harris waking up app right now, but they’re, they’re all good and uh please check them out and let me know what you think. So, that’s it for today’s mini talk number 7. So please enjoy the rest of today’s program and we’ll see you later.