CELEBRATE STRESS!

By Mark Ackerman, PA

I have lived in a bit of a dualistic world. On the one hand, as a Physician Assistant I work to relieve my patient’s physiologic and sometimes psychological stress. On the other hand, in my former life as a college basketball strength and conditioning coach, I worked to impose stress on my athletes. While at first these two jobs seem to be diabolically opposed, the truth is they are actually more complimentary then one might think. It is clear that if you have too much stress in your life it can lead to sickness, disease and poor performance. What is not as clear to a lot of people but is equally true is the opposite, that if you don’t have enough stress in your life it can lead to sickness, disease and poor performance.

While we tend to think of stress only in a negative light, it is the strength and conditioning coaches’ job to carry the torch for the positive view of stress. That is because strength coaches, have learned how to manipulate stress in order to bring about positive changes in athletes. More specifically, strength coaches do this through utilizing concepts like the General Adaptation Syndrome developed by Hans Selye, a Hungarian physician and organic chemist who is responsible for the seminal work in physiologic stress.

The General Adaptation Syndrome simply stated is a three stage response to stress. The first stage is the “alarm” stage where the body responds to stress negatively. Not wanting to get out of its comfort zone it struggles with the shock of increased demands and so performance/health goes down. The second stage is “resistance” where the body adapts to the stress and performance/health returns to normal or in most cases increases beyond normal as the body develops a higher level of resistance to stress. The final stage is “exhaustion” which occurs if the stress lasts too long or is too great. It is in this stage where disease occurs and performance drops below where it was before the stress was ever applied.

Strength coaches of course manipulate stress and rest periods in order to bring about the most positive adaptations in athletes. It is not just about the quantity of stress that is imposed on someone but the quality of that stress, how you approach it and where you place it in your routine that brings about positive adaptations instead of exhaustion. Rest periods are also manipulated as a way of helping athletes to adapt. The current buzz word for this these days is “recovery” and that also can take many forms. One form of recovery is to manipulate rest periods through a simple change in mentality. As the saying goes, “It’s not the load that breaks you down but how you carry it that makes the difference.” Changing how we carry stress from a mental standpoint I think is huge in not only athletic endeavors but in life in general.

The most difficult part about stress though, is when you didn’t ask for it and you can’t control it. When other people or situations beyond your control impose stress on you is when things can get out of hand and lead to exhaustion pretty fast. It is at these times that you need to adjust how you are carrying the stress so as to make it lighter. Mentally, you may need to take a step back and simply change your approach to it. This is where a counselor may come in to play. In fact the simple act of changing your mental approach to stress is sometimes all that is required to bringing about positive adaptations. Physically, you may need to see the physical therapist to change your movement patterns and thus change how you carry stress.

There are many more approaches to stress that one can adopt, but the key, I think, is to try to view stress in a positive light and in fact to learn how to impose stress on ourselves so we are more prepared to handle it when it comes from outside ourselves. The primary form this takes is in self- denial. When we intentionally deny ourselves some comforts and conveniences we actually get stronger.

From a medical standpoint, stress can clearly lead to ill health, but, as mentioned above, a lack of stress can lead to sickness as well. A too common example is through the overindulgence of sitting in a chair which leads to arthritis, and cardiac and respiratory deconditioning. The sedentary life style that champions a low stress state of being has spurred on more medications for obesity, diabetes, arthritis and heart disease than cigarettes have created for cancer. Thus if you don’t have enough stress in your life you become weak and vulnerable.

The take home message here is that we all need to learn how not to simply “deal” with stress, but to learn how to use stress as a tool. In other words, stress leads to adaptation. Adaptation leads to improved health and improved health is something we can all celebrate. So even though it may sound backwards, there are definitely times in our lives where we need to actually celebrate stress!