The Natural Connection

The young mother of three children sits in my office with a worried, strained look on her face. She is concerned about her health. She has frequent headaches and pains in her chest. Her stomach bothers her a lot, she sleeps poorly and feels anxious and out of control. She reports that her marriage is stable, her children are happy and well adjusted in school, and she has a full time job that she loves.

 Besides her regular day job, she spends hours every day after work chauffeuring her children about town to soccer practice, piano lessons, Boy Scouts. There are trips to the beauty salon for her daughter and to the vet for the dog, household chores to be done, meals to shop for and cook. She juggles cell phones and grocery carts, laundry baskets and baby car seats. She tries to find time for family, church, and community activities that are meaningful to her, but complains she is “overwhelmed and can’t keep up like she used to”. Who could? 

This young lady has found that by living life in the Fast Lane, it really is possible to “have it all”. You really can have headaches, anxiety, gastrointestinal disorders, chest pains, back pains, chronic fatigue, as well as a host of other physical complaints as a result of life stress. It is estimated that stress related illnesses account for up to 70% of visits to primary care physicians in America. 

Many patients like this woman go to their doctor seeking “something for their nerves”. They leave the physician’s office burdened down with pills for headaches, pills for stomach pain, sleeping pills, and tranquilizers. They feel more medicated, but not necessarily more healthy. Americans like quick and easy fixes to health problems, and Western Medicine and the massive US pharmaceutical industry has been more than happy to comply. Billions of dollars are spent annually to treat symptoms of stress related illnesses that would not be necessary if we would just learn how to shift gears and slow down. 

It may not be possible for this young mother to dramatically change her lifestyle at this point. It may just be enough for her to become aware of the price she pays for the lifestyle she has chosen, and to make plans for the future. If she cannot permanently get out of the Fast Lane, she can learn simple ways to at least pull over for fifteen minutes twice a day, and dramatically improve her health. 

At the Stress Reduction Center at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center patients learn to deal with their illness through the use of meditation. Thousands of patients who have gone through the Clinic’s programs over the past ten years have learned ways to manage chronic pain, high blood pressure, chronic anxiety, and other disorders through the use of a technique called Mindfulness Meditation. The technique, which has its roots in Zen Buddhism, teaches you to keep your attention fully in the present moment. This helps quiet the mind and restores a sense of balance, which relieves stress. 

The director of the clinic, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, has written a book for those unable to travel to the clinic, “Full Catastrophe Living: using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness”. Affiliated with Harvard, his clinic has served as a role model for dozens of similar programs across the United States that strive to teach patients techniques to deal with stress-related illness that rely less on drugs and more on self-healing. 

The healthful benefits of meditation are more than just speculative. A recent trial of the effects of another form of meditation, Transcendental Meditation (TM), sponsored by NIH revealed that hypertensive African American men and women were able to decrease thickening of carotid arteries and decrease atherosclerosis by regular practice of TM over 6-9 months. The amount of improvement was significant enough to decrease their risk of heart attack by 11% and their risk of stroke by 15%. 

Another recent study conducted by Dr. Kabat-Zinn showed that patients enrolled in his mindfulness meditation program were able to heal from psoriasis, a serious skin condition, much faster than similar patients offered conventional therapy UV light and topical creams. Research has also shown that regular meditation practice can help fibromyalgia, PMS, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic pain, and debilitating anxiety.

 There are dozens of excellent audiotapes on the market that can help patients learn basic meditation techniques. Sounds True is a company that carries a good variety, if you are interested in further exploring this form of Mind Body healing. 

To receive a Patient Information Sheet with instructions for a simple relaxation practice, you may write to :

©2000-2003 Pauline M. Bellecci, MD