Transcript Stress: the Cocaine of Modern America

Presentation by
Leonard “Lennie” Mees, MD
6202 SE 60th Avenue
Portland, OR 97206
503-236-8978
[email protected]
www.healthinnovators.org
Story of Stress
Stress: the Cocaine of
Modern America
How you can beat the
addiction with
knowledge and
empowerment
Preservation of Human Capital
Pay it Forward
Starring
Helen Hunt and
Kevin Spacy
Do the right thing for only one
reason It’s the right thing to do!!!
What Causes Illness and Death?
80% results from American’s living
unhealthy lifestyles
20% other things (including
environmental exposures)
Willie Sutton Principle
Go where the money is!!
Opportunity!!!
Cost of Poor Health
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1.6 trillion dollars - 2004
1/7 of GNP
2.6 trillion dollars - 2010
1/5 GNP
1 million lives to vascular
disease - 35,000 more women
than men
• 80% potentially unnecessary
Stress and Your Heart
• Stress releases adrenaline and cortisol
• These chemicals effect tiny microinfarcts
• 100 x a day, 365 days, 20 to 30 years
…. Or
• Chronic smoldering stress
• “Swiss-cheese” heart!!!
• Pump failure
• Irritable heart - Lethal
arrhythmias
Cocaine and Your Heart
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Cocaine releases adrenaline
Cocaine causes micro-infarcts ….
Cocaine causes “Swiss-cheese” heart!!!
Pump failure
Lethal arrhythmias
Just like stress!!!
You Can’t Tell Them Apart!!!
• Both are addictive
• Both are lethal
• Yet, on one hand, we accept
stress as part of our
American landscape ….
• But, on the other hand, we
(rightfully) malign
cocaine abuse
• When will we learn?????
Are you a “Hot Reactor”
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BP elevates
HR elevates
17% of total population
35% of professionals
Combine with “anger-in” …
high risk of sudden death
What we’ll talk about ...
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What is stress?
Personalize it
Flameout and burnout
Prevention of stress
Principles of stress management
Stress management techniques
My challenge to you ….
What is Stress?
It’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse …. No, it’s the
continuing series of
small tragedies
that send the man to the
madhouse …
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …...
Perils of Peak Performance
Peak Performance
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Optimal Performance
Flameout
Burnout
Stress
Top Stressors?
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Job insecurity
Doing more with less
Time
Not having a voice
Employee relations
Communication difficulties
Family – balance with work
Feeling trapped and/or static
Change
Mindfulness Meditation
Learn to live in the “Precious Present.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.
If we are mindful, we will
make good choices in food,
friends, family, and finances
If we are mindful, we can
accomplish goals we never
thought possible
Think
• Derek Bok burned out at Harvard
• Took a teaching position at Stanford
• Started each day with one hour of
Thinking
• Blank paper, pencil or pen and
• Think about your life
• Commit ideas to paper ….
An Idea not
Committed to Paper
Remains Simply a
Wish
Robert G. Allen, author
Exercise
• A great stress preventer
• A superb stress manager
• Perhaps the best depression
manager and preventer
• How good do you feel after a brisk
walk?
Nutrition
• Do this experiment ….
• Eat a McDonald’s “Heart
Attack in a Sack”
• Eat a self-selected and self-prepared
meal of fruit, vegetable, and low-fat
protein source
• How do you feel after each? Honestly!
Journaling
• A double benefit ….
• The emotional release of writing what you did, what bugged you, what
you loved
• The position of objective observer seeing your life and problems, then
solving them
Listen
When I ask you to listen and you start giving advice,
you have not done what I asked.
When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me
why
I should feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings,
When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to
do
something to solve my problems,you have failed
me, strange
as that may seem
Perhaps that is why prayer works for some people,
Because
God is mute and He doesn’t offer advice or try to fix
things, He just listens and trusts you to work it out
yourself.
So please just listen and hear me. And if you want to talk
wait a few minutes for your turn and I promise I’ll
listen to you.
Create Rituals
Power of Prayer
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Foundation
Community
Trust
Hope
Always available
Three Flavors of
Communication
• Passive - Guess what I want?
• Aggressive - alienates everyone
concerned
• Assertive - considers both sides, winwin, thoughtful, loving,
vulnerable - but oh,
so worth the effort!!!
Love
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It makes the world go around
It prevents stress
It prevents depression
It can reverse coronary artery
disease
• How do you love? By your simple
choice
Awareness
“A problem, once recognized, is half
solved.”
George Washington
Perception
Stress is perception
not events
Choice
“Beyond that glorious
five-second rage,
Everything is choice.”
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, MD
Joseph
Where do you speak from?
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Throat or your core, your heart
Voice has a different register
Clarity
Beauty
Vulnerability
Love
Responsibility
As participants in an organized
society,
We have the responsibility to
make good choices
Go with the Forces of Nature
• Cope
• Bend
• Blend
Frog Asks for a Loan
• It’s a nik-nack, Patty Wak
• Give the frog a loan
• His old man is a Rolling Stone
Work Stress?
Keep an up-to-date resume
Know five people whom you can call,
today,
if you decide to switch jobs
(write their names down)
Balance Sheet Technique
good
bad
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Healthy
Happy
Fine family
Good dog
Kids doing well
Two cars
Good vacations
Parents OK
Well liked by peers
• Money
• Marriage
• Job
The Six Months to Live Game
Divide all the “things” in your life into:
•What you think you should do
•What you absolutely must do
•What you want to do
Wouldn’t it be a shame, tragic,
nearly criminal, if you died
and didn’t do what you
want to do?
Play
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Charles Whitman and the Texas Tower
Kevin Carroll of Nike
Pete Carroll of USC
What’s your play? (Chubby Bunny?)
www.instituteforplay.com
Pay Attention
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To your colors
To your clothes
To your surroundings
To your schedule
To ….. ???
Use a Talisman
Ignore the Jerks
Follow the Lead of
Leonardo Da Vinci
“Every now and then, go away, take a little
relaxation, because when you come back to
your work, your judgment will be surer. To
remain constantly at work will cause you to
lose power of judgment. Go some distance
away, because then the work appears smaller
and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and
a lack of harmony or proportion is more readily
seen.”
Leonardo
My Challenge to You
• You most likely won’t change
• But, you can
• Control
• Education
• Your keys to success
Earliest CAD Diagnosis
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EBCT
Fast Spiral CT
Cost about $400
Available at major centers
Could be the best money
you ever spent
“I Feel Better”
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I lost weight
I started to exercise
I learned to meditate
I’m eating better
Your Doggie Bag
• What’s possible