Senior Living: ‘The United States of Stress’ and what to do about it

A couple watches surfers from the Huntington Beach Pier in Huntington Beach on Monday, Dec. 25, 2017. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG) By David W. Hart, Ph.D. Contributing writer On a recent Sunday, I was scrolling through the plethora of television and movie options available to me on Apple TV and came across a documentary on HBO titled “The United States of Stress.” The program is moderated by Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN fame and explores the empirical science that makes one finding abundantly clear: Americans are dying as a result of chronic stress. The documentary explores the possible causes of what has become a sobering contemporary narrative: After decades of declining mortality rates, life expectancy in the United States has dropped – a result of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes as “deaths of despair” – those caused by the epidemic of alcoholism, opioid addiction and suicide. David W. Hart, Ph.D. In a medical or clinical context, stress is a physical, mental, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension. Stresses can be external (from the environment, psychological, or social situations) or internal (illness, or from a medical procedure). From an everyday perspective, stress can be related to caring for a loved one, endless traffic, financial strain, relational conflict, loss of cognitive and physical abilities, emotional trauma — including regret and guilt — and managing chronic health conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia. You likely have experienced the feeling of being over-burdened, over-extended and just plain overwhelmed sometime within the last week. The larger concern relates to the toxic toll chronic, compounding stress can take on the mind and body over time. Increased stress hormones (part of the body’s mechanism for enacting the fight-or-flight response) can increase blood […]

Click here to view full article