In my thirty-something years in practice, I have treated people from all walks of life, for a long list of symptoms. While most conditions have multiple causes, the single most common cause I’ve seen is stress. A common example is migraines, which can be caused by food sensitivities, hormonal imbalances, cranial structural misalignments, and relationship discord, to name a few; however, stress is invariably part of the clinical picture.
The widespread effects of stress on our minds, bodies, and spirits are nothing new. In the 1920s, the Hungarian endocrinologist Hans Selye described what he called “General Adaptation Syndrome,” or the body’s response to the demands placed on it. He detailed how stress induces autonomic hormonal responses that, over time, can lead to high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, arthritis, kidney disease, and allergic reactions. At the time, the notion that there is a connection between stress and physical illness was innovative and controversial.
From the earliest days of my career, I saw evidence of this connection. In those days, I only treated back pain, neck pain, and headaches, and when I did a complete spinal adjustment on a patient and applied some physical therapy modality, it helped release their stress and started the process. physical relief.
Since then, stress has increased exponentially. But why? In the 1980s, people were in financial stress, just like they are now. People have suffered from relationship stress since the dawn of time. However, after 9/11, I noticed a dramatic increase in stress that only seemed to get more intense and profound as time went on. And, as I became a better doctor, I also began to attract more difficult cases, that is, those with more complex symptoms and disorders. I learned how to make emotional adjustments to counter the underlying triggers that keep stress stuck and the body holding on to it. So I discovered how to turn off chronic stress. People who have prolonged stress get to the point where the cortisol in their adrenal glands is elevated not just in “fight or flight” situations, but continuously, meaning you never rest. This causes weight gain, poor sleep, anxiety, and chronic restlessness. It also contributes to every disorder I see, like depression, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, fatigue, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic pain, acid reflux, and vertigo, to name a few.
Again, this stress reaction is not new, so why are people getting these ailments with increasing regularity? What has really changed is the rhythm of society and the attitudinal polarization. When we were children, we periodically heard about some tragedy in our city or town. We are now fed minute-by-minute spoonfuls of global misery and tragedies through the twenty-four-hour news cycle and social media. I could go on and on, but this you already know. Distress has become a staple in the American diet, and almost everyone today suffers from some degree of stress and anxiety. The commercial, I will listen, claims that one in four Americans is experiencing mental health problems!
According to a 2012 national study, one in 20 teens suffers from anxiety or depression. One in three of our children have conditions like ADHD, asthma and allergies. One in sixty has autism; this is more than one in 10,000 in the 1960s. American children have fifty vaccinations by the age of six, so why are they so sick? One likely reason is that they are internalizing negative energy from a world over which they have little control. Their illnesses, in turn, affect the mental and physical health of their parents.
Prescriptions for drugs that suppress symptoms (but don’t address the underlying cause(s) of them) have increased exponentially and dramatically, and opiates have become an epidemic, killing more people than our current wars. It’s not just America either; a recent study from Ontario shows that in 2015, one in six deaths of people ages twenty-five to thirty-four was related to opioids.
We claim to understand that chronic stress is harmful and needs to be reduced, but we still tend to underestimate its effects on us. We can take a yoga class here and there or try some other relaxation technique, but at the end of the day we still accept anxiety as a part of life. We look at brain scans, MRIs, and blood tests to find a tumor or other pathology, but we often overlook the chronic stress that could be causing unexplained symptoms. Medical tests may show changes in the brain and heart, but we are not seeing the source of those changes.
DNA doesn’t really change, but epigenetics, the study of the effect environmental and other factors have on our genes, may explain why we manifest disease. For example, children of Holocaust survivors can get cancer even though there is no cancer in the family tree. The stress and trauma of being in a concentration camp before the children were born altered the DNA of the parents and “turns on” the cancer gene. Another factor is the food we eat, which over time has become more artificial and processed with sugar in everything, plus more genetically modified foods with more pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides in them. These chemicals can activate symptoms such as gastrointestinal upset; Various factors can lead to epigenetic stress that is passed on to future generations.
The good news is that just as these genes can be turned on, they can also be turned off. In this situation, I combine two techniques: EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and NAET (Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique)
I first muscularly test the strong response of a patient’s arm to stress. If it gets weak, I put anti-stress (cortisol) ampoules on their hands and do a slow-motion EMDR maneuver, which lasts two minutes. I often see the patient’s eyes twitching, indicating that the stress is affecting their nervous system and thought processes. I then test the patient’s strength again to make sure there is no weakness in the muscles due to stress. It usually takes twenty-four hours for the patient to fully process the treatment and for the nervous system to integrate the treatment. As a result, the patient will begin to be more relaxed in everyday situations and the healing of the myriad of symptoms will begin. Stress may not cause the 7,000 or so known rare diseases, but having a rare disease is stressful. Having any illness causes stress, so addressing stress without medication is beneficial. That said, there are natural remedies that can help (ie science has shown that dark chocolate (70% cacao) reduces stress and inflammation).
Our changing world required me to dig deeper to find out why some people don’t respond to treatments. In the process I discovered that this is not something mental, but the core of our humanity, the soul. I believe that the soul is sacred and for a long time avoided facing any therapeutic intervention. But now it has naturally evolved and I use a gentle approach to release the stress that affects the patient’s soul. Patients seem to be responding well, and the only side effects are decreased anxiety, better relaxation, and a sense of joy. You can’t ask for a better and smoother procedure than that!