I have always maintained that some stress can be a good thing. In college, it was stress that made you finish your paper on time (and for me it was the last minute crunch stress that made it a great paper!). With work, it is stress that gets you up in the morning and gets you to finish your projects on time. With my health, it’s the stress of getting sick that forces me to do all of my therapies to prevent it. Without stress, we would have little motivation or reason to do much of anything… so we need it. We do.
But it is when the stress gets to be overwhelming that it starts to affect our bodies physically. I know this all too well. In college, without fail, I, and the rest of the school, would get sick during finals week. If I’m experiencing a stressful situation, I’ll start coughing this tight constricted cough. My body tells me it’s overloaded by giving me a fever once and a while. And in general, I just don’t feel healthy when I’m stressed. When positive stress starts to become negative stress, then we owe it to our bodies to do what we can to reduce or eliminate it. Whether this be yoga, meditation, getting more sleep, removing ourselves from the negative situation, or finding creative ways of coping with our stress– a change must be made in our lives, otherwise our bodies will be toxic.
Lately, I’ve noticed that there were many situations within my control that were causing stress in my life. So I’ve made some changes and I’m now experiencing a relatively stress free life. The other day, I was just going about my day and I felt this immense sense of calm. I started to realize that I’d be feeling this for a few days now. I, for once, wasn’t thinking about the future or what I had to do next or worrying about whatever I would typically worry about that day. My heart didn’t feel like it was pumping out of my chest. I was just in that moment, totally content and totally at ease. What I didn’t realize, until the stress was gone, was that it was much worse than I had realized.
For a couple months now, I’ve just felt off. It didn’t seem like my antibiotics were working like they typically do, I was getting fevers intermittently, I felt tired and fatigued, my cough was all out of wack, and I was getting discouraged from decreasing PFTs. I thought, this is just life now and there’s no recovering. But I didn’t realize that dealing with the stressors in my life would allow me to see such positive changes in my health.
Now I’m not as tired as I used to be. That tight, stressed out cough is gone. The fevers have gone away. My lungs feel stronger. Life is just more enjoyable. I haven’t done PFTs yet, but I can imagine that they may have begun to stabilize. As a result of my steps to decrease stress, I’m also running more (because I have more time and energy TO run), I’m doing more of the things I enjoy and less things to “pass time,” and I’m just feeing more like myself. Tomorrow is no longer on my mind. Life is just about now.
When we, as people with CF, think about all of the things we do to stay healthy we think about the medicine, the treatments, the nebulizers… maybe, to a degree, we think about the exercise, the food we eat, the rest we get. But what about the way we live our lives? Doesn’t that affect our health just as much as doing our treatments that day? If we live a life filled with stress, our health can suffer. I’m all for living a “normal” life despite CF, but sometimes we have to make the decision to adapt the normalcy to a life with CF. We have to think about what stresses us out, what overwhelms us, what makes us feel unhappy and unfulfilled. And then we have to take steps to either cope with those things, or eliminate them. And this goes for healthy people too. Web MD will tell you that stress “seems to worsen or increase the risk of conditions like obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, depression, gastrointestinal problems, and asthma.” Yet, our doctors hardly ever tell us we need to decrease stress in our lives.
I believe in a holistic approach to my care. Yes, I’m compliant with my medications. But when I don’t take care of the mental and emotional pieces of my health, then the treatment is incomplete. What can you do to cope or eliminate stress in your life? What can you do to be healthier?
