What You Need To Know About Holistic Strategies For Dealing With Stress

Managing Stress During the COVID Pandemic

No one is immune to the effects of stress; in fact, the human body is built to experience and respond to it. Being overwhelmed or unable to cope with pressures in life is especially common stress to experience at this time.

Thirty-three per cent of people globally say they are severely stressed, 77 per cent say it impacts their physical and mental health, and 48 per cent say it interferes with their sleep. 

The Covid 19 Pandemic has heightened people’s feelings of stress, anxiety, worry, and fear particularly in lockdowns. Because of the delta variant of Covid-19, about half of Australia’s population is currently in lockdown. Stress is affecting people for several reasons:

• They are in lockdown
• They are lonely
• Limited ability to get out of the house
• Financial challenges – can’t pay their bills 
• Loss of employment because of the lockdowns

In his book A Life Less Stressed, Dr. Ron Ehrlich recommends taking a holistic approach in managing stress and sleep by approaching it more constructively.

The Five Categories of Stress

The team at the Sydney Holistic Dental Centre takes a holistic approach to treating patients, providing care that considers the whole person.

For the past 40 years, Dr Ron has used the five stress model to identify and help manage stressors:

• Emotional
• Environmental 
• Postural
• Nutritional 
• Dental stress

Different Ways to Look at Stress 

The nervous system perspective  

Part of the nervous system regulates involuntary physiological processes. It contains three divisions: sympathetic, parasympathetic, and enteric.

• Ideally, we should be in the parasympathetic mode which is commonly associated with a state of relaxation
• When we are confronted with dangerous or threatening situations like abuse, violence, or trauma, our stress hormones are amplified, and our freeze mode, “fight or flight” kicks in.

Stress impacts your health

Stress can weaken your immune system or increase chronic inflammation because stressors are common denominators in both mental and physical illnesses.

Exposure to environmental toxins

Stress kicks in when your immune system is exposed to;

• Toxins
• Environmental air pollution 
• Mould in your house 
• Environmental chemicals

Other stressors include:

• Eating unhealthy healthy food 
• Sitting at your desk all the time
• Underlying infections or chronic inflammation within your body that you are unaware of

Identifying and reducing as many of these stressors as possible is the goal of managing stress holistically

The Five Pillars For Balancing Stress

Life is a balancing act and if you think of it as a balancing beam, on one side you can identify and minimise as many stressors as possible.  

It is critical to developing resilience in your body and mind because it’s difficult to handle stress unless you are as well-rested and as healthy as possible. The five pillars for balancing stress are:

• Sleeping  
• Breathing 
• Nourishment 
• Movement
• Thinking 

Every one of these pillars and every stressor mentioned before is interconnected – they are not isolated. This is what a holistic approach is all about.

A Holistic View of Managing Stress and Sleep

Stress can keep you awake at night, so developing good sleep hygiene will help you obtain a decent night’s sleep.

You will inevitably have periods in your life when you don’t get enough sleep for days or even weeks. If the problem persists, you should address it. Consider these two suggestions:

•  Talking to somebody about what it is that you’re so stressed out about 
•  Journaling before you go to bed

 “If you haven’t slept well for a few days or a week, let alone months or a year, you can find sleep deprivation makes you short-tempered and dismissive. If you  get a good night’s sleep, your attitude can change dramatically.”

– Dr Ron Ehrlich

Change How You React To And Manage Life Stresses

The best method to deal with stress is to take a holistic approach:

• Take a holistic view to balance your health and consider how everything is interconnected
• Concentrate on what you can control rather than worrying about what you can’t
• Because mood and food are inextricably linked, be conscious of what you eat and how you nourish yourself
• Practice getting in touch with your feelings 
• Rather than bundling it all up, explain your inner feelings and talk to professionals who can be constructive and helpful in the process
• Practice breathing exercises to switch on the rest and digest part of your nervous system by:
  • inhaling through the nose for four seconds
  • breathing out for four seconds slowly
  • holding your breath for four seconds
  • repeat that five to ten times a day 

Dr Ron’s Top Three Suggestions for Managing Stress

1. Your health is far too important to leave to anybody else. Take control of the situation, it will the best decision you’ll ever make.
2. Control what you can and forget the rest because it’s pointless to be worried about what you can’t control.
3. Focus on sleeping and breathing as pillars of a holistic approach.

Thanks to Brent Bultitude for Hosting Dr Ron on 2HD Radio

Follow Brent at Radio Station 2HD for all his latest shows, including several with Dr Ron.

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