Conventional healthcare focuses on physical injuries and disease but treats mental and emotional stress like unwanted stepchildren. Yet, stress not only aggravates pain but creates it. Even without a definitive physical injury, mental and emotional stress can manifest as pain, spasms, and suffering. For example, simply think about a corrupt politician, cutthroat coworker, or challenging family member. Picture the lines of their face, their grating voice, the impact of their words, and the devastation caused by their actions. These thoughts may trigger tightness in your jaw, shoulders, or back. A frown may spread across your face. Your heart rate may quicken as your stress response flicks on. Inflammation and pain start to rise. Now take a big breath in and a longer breath out. Give it a try, and take three big breaths with longer exhales. Now picture somebody you love — a family member, friend, mentor, or pet. Remember how you feel in their presence, the sound of their voice, and their warmth. You may notice some of the tightness melt away. This experience reminds us that the mind and body are not separate entities: stress in the mind manifests in the body and vice versa. What happens in the mind does not stay in the mind (Vegas rules do not apply here). Simply put, physical injuries and stress both contribute to inflammation and pain.
Most orthopedists do not write prescriptions for stress reduction but they should. Stress and pain are intimately linked. Tackling stress is a critical factor for lasting pain relief and prevention – on its own or in combination with typical treatments. This approach helps address one of the root causes of painful inflammation. Without reducing stress, our bodies and brains remain inflamed. This means typical treatments like medications only provide partial, temporary relief. Without addressing stress, we are left trapped in a pain cycle with short-lived reprieves but no long-term relief in sight.
Stress triggers the fight, flight or freeze response. It saves our lives in dangerous situations like facing a fire so we act immediately, without pausing to think. But modern life activates this same reaction to nonthreatening and threatening situations — from dealing with a screaming toddler, a reckless driver or a frustrated customer to handling an irate boss, a nagging partner, or a devastating medical condition. Under repetitive and ongoing stress, we default to immediate, emotional reactions. Many of us are living our lives on a hair trigger, ready to fight, flight or freeze in response to the slightest challenge.
A chronically activated stress response means our muscles stay tense and our blood sugar remains elevated. Our immune system, which is meant to protect us, may go haywire and attack us. Everything shifts to a state of ongoing panic, pain, and inflammation. Repeated stress without respite reconfigures our brain, weakening our higher-level brain functions such as thought, attention, and behavior. This is the “thrive” part of the brain, which enables us to handle challenges and build pain resilience. Stress impairs this evolved part of the brain and expands connections to the emotional, primitive part of the brain. As a result, the emotional response wins out in challenging situations. That’s why we snap at a child’s hundredth question, swear at the person who cuts us off in traffic, or get defensive with an annoying coworker. Often stress-induced anger, fear, or desperation leads us to say something we did not mean, or at least would not have said aloud if we were calmer. Daily, repeated stress reinforces this response and makes it a reflex. If we hear our child start to whine, our heart rate increases. If somebody cuts ahead of us in traffic, our jaw clenches, and the survival brain activates. If a customer starts yelling at us, we think not today, and start yelling back. Over time, connections to the thrive brain dwindle while those to the survival brain grow. With these changes, our pain tolerance and recovery prospects diminish. Every little stressor causes pain, and recovery feels impossible. In survival mode, we cannot heal, repair, or recover from pain. But hope lies in fortifying connections to the thrive brain. We can beef up these connections and learn to handle challenges with rational responses and not knee-jerk reactions. While we may not be able to avoid stressful situations or people, we can improve the ways we approach and process these challenges to limit pain.
Stress-relieving activities affect the mind and body simultaneously. An activity or practice that boosts well-being benefits the whole person. Going for a hike not only improves orthopaedic and cardiac health but also supports a healthy and resilient mind. We can take advantage of this connection and reduce physical pain with practices designed to tackle stress. Calming our mind helps relieve stress and pain in our body. So how do we take advantage of the mind-body connection? The natural antidote to the stress response is the relaxation response, part of the parasympathetic nervous system, that stops the release of stress hormones and triggers hormones that relax us and enhance our sense of well-being. Our heart rate and breathing slow down, our blood pressure drops, and our tense muscles relax. By intentionally activating our relaxation response throughout the day, we can stop living triggered and on high-alert.
Mind-body activities such as mindfulness, meditation, yoga, breathing exercises, tai chi, and qigong have been conclusively shown to decrease pain, stress, and inflammation at the molecular level. But activating the relaxation response does not require a commitment to a formal practice. An easy way to do it is by spending at least ten minutes a day doing something calming and joyful that engages you — meditating, doodling, walking outside, taking a warm bath, reading a magazine, or enjoying any other screen-free activity. Let’s call it an adult time-out (ATO). During an ATO, you don’t have to answer to anybody, perform, produce, or achieve. Let go of what has to be done or what didn’t get done; simply be present with the experience. As with any new skill, it grows easier with practice. Although these activities may appear to have no practical purpose or goal, they have a vital, powerful role in relieving stress and pain, and building resilience. Got ten minutes for your health? It is just what the doctor ordered. Thankfully, there are many other little steps we can take to decrease stress, reduce inflammation, and ease pain. We can live better by tackling physical, mental, and emotional stressors with a complete approach to pain relief and prevention.
Based on the book The Pain Solution. Copyright © 2022 by Dr. Saloni Sharma. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.NewWorldLibrarycom
