In 24 years of practice I have never seen the fear and overwhelm in my clients or in the community…and that includes the aftermath of being in practice literally hours after the twin towers collapse of 9/11.
This too though seems surreal.
We are continually being bombarded with so much information about coronavirus (COVID-19) that it can become terrifying, and unfortunately only some of the information is true. There is so much conflicting information, hearsay and rumour that it becomes hard to wade through the quagmire of data.
There is a really important piece of information that I feel though isn’t being spoken about as much – for whatever reason I do not know – and that is what I would like to let you know about.
Before I get to that though I would like to let you in on some research out of the esteemed medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine, and this dates back to 1991. Yes, it is a few years old, however you will see that this does not matter.
The research is entitled “Psychological Stress and Susceptibility to the Common Cold”
What the researchers wanted to find out was if there was a relationship between how stressed people were, and the likelihood of them getting the cold or the flu.
There were 370 volunteers and they had 1 of 5 viruses flushed directly up their nose. That is, a syringe carrying the disease was placed inside of their nose and the disease was squirted up their nose, not getting the disease by rubbing their eyes or sitting next to someone who might have it.
All of these people prior to this injection if the disease were tested to see how much stress that they were under.
Now, this is where it gets really interesting…One of the actual viruses that was flushed up their nose was a corona virus – not the current one that we are faced with now, but another one.
What were the results:
#1 Not everyone got sick – only 60% of the corona cases got sick.
Therefore, if we can have a virus stuck up our nose, and if we have enough vitality then we might also not get sick
#2 There was a direct relationship between how stressed someone was and the intensity of the symptoms and how long they lasted.
#3 Psychological stress was a better predictor than any other lifestyle stress.
The message in this:
We are constantly being told that we have no control over our health; we are being told to take this or to rub this in, instead of being told that we control our own body and our own health. News out of china is that the people getting the sickest were the ones who were stressed and with lousy lifestyle habits.
We are in the driver’s seat.
You are way more in control than what you think. There are strategies to decrease stress. Here is a simple cheat sheet to start.
Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we share more on ways in which you can decrease your stress load be it physical, chemical or emotional.
In Loving Service
Dr. Brett
Family Chiropractic Chatswood: your partner in achieving optimal spinal health and overall wellbeing.
