Video: How Stressed Are You?
The Superstress Solution
We live on little sleep, little exercise and lots of work. We eat junk food on the run and fuel up with caffeine and sugar. We are chronically overcommitted, subjected to a 24/7 news cycle, and can?t take our eyes off our computers, blackberries and cell phones. Is it any wonder that anxious is the new normal?
Though our bodies are hardwired to cope with stress, we are biologically ill-equipped to handle the shear amount of 21st stress we endure every day. The human brain can?t distinguish true physical emergencies from daily hassles, deadlines, information overload, difficult decisions, guilt, and worries. The physiological reaction is the same- SuperStress, the non-stop triggering of our natural fight-or-flight response or the automatic switch from calm to high alert. Constantly in this "high gear" physical state, our bodies never get back to neutral and don?t have a chance to recover, as they are evolutionarily designed to do.
In her new book, THE SUPER STRESS SOLUTION, Dr. Roberta Lee illustrates how being in a constant state of "flight" response does more damage to our health than we realize and scientifically makes the connection between SuperStress and diseases that threaten our lives--obesity, heart disease, diabetes.
This is a new, widespread chronic condition, one that is playing itself out in national headlines far too often, and one that many physicians are starting to understand as a bona fide phenomenon.
Dr. Roberta Lee, is the vice chair of the Department of Integrative Medicine and co-director of the Fellowship in Integrative Medicine at Beth-Israel?s Continuum Center for Health and Healing in New York City. One of the four physicians in the first graduating class of Andrew Weil?s famed Arizona Institute for Integrative Medicine, she frequently travels to Micronesia as part of an interdisciplinary team studying the cultural and botanical influences on health, healing, and the promotion of wellness in chronic disease.
Though our bodies are hardwired to cope with stress, we are biologically ill-equipped to handle the shear amount of 21st stress we endure every day. The human brain can?t distinguish true physical emergencies from daily hassles, deadlines, information overload, difficult decisions, guilt, and worries. The physiological reaction is the same- SuperStress, the non-stop triggering of our natural fight-or-flight response or the automatic switch from calm to high alert. Constantly in this "high gear" physical state, our bodies never get back to neutral and don?t have a chance to recover, as they are evolutionarily designed to do.
In her new book, THE SUPER STRESS SOLUTION, Dr. Roberta Lee illustrates how being in a constant state of "flight" response does more damage to our health than we realize and scientifically makes the connection between SuperStress and diseases that threaten our lives--obesity, heart disease, diabetes.
This is a new, widespread chronic condition, one that is playing itself out in national headlines far too often, and one that many physicians are starting to understand as a bona fide phenomenon.
Dr. Roberta Lee, is the vice chair of the Department of Integrative Medicine and co-director of the Fellowship in Integrative Medicine at Beth-Israel?s Continuum Center for Health and Healing in New York City. One of the four physicians in the first graduating class of Andrew Weil?s famed Arizona Institute for Integrative Medicine, she frequently travels to Micronesia as part of an interdisciplinary team studying the cultural and botanical influences on health, healing, and the promotion of wellness in chronic disease.