Lyme & Stress
Don’t Let This Get the Best of You, It Could Fire Up Your Lyme Symptoms
By Terry Henry, MBA, CNC, CRM
Photo 4778219 © Abimages | Dreamstime.com
Legendary holistic doctor Andrew Weil, MD once said, “...stress is a primary or aggravating cause of most illnesses. Even if people have physical diseases, relaxation can benefit them so stress doesn’t damage their bodies”.
A key part of my arsenal for beating Lyme was controlling my reaction to stress. We can’t totally eliminate stress from our lives, but we CAN control how we respond to it.
Global Lyme Alliance blogger Jennifer Crystal told her doctor about her “raging” Lyme relapse during a stressful time in her life, and his response was:
“...Getting that stressed out is like walking into a minefield of ticks...Stress causes a release of cortisol, which can speed up the reproduction of Lyme bacteria”. 1
My research taught me that constant emotional upsets, or being anxious, fearful, sad, resentful or angry over long periods of time about things like your Lyme symptoms, life dramas like an unhappy relationship, demanding job or unresolved emotional trauma- can worsen symptoms by short-circuiting our most important line of defense against Lyme – our immune system.
A mind-body connection known as the “fight-or-flight stress response” is our evolutionary survival trigger that surges hormones and biochemical reactions to get us out of danger, or when we feel stressed or “threatened” by life situations.
Known as our sympathetic nervous system, it kicks in when we’re keyed up emotionally or “chronically” (regularly) upset, typical of our super busy, hard- charging American lifestyle. It gears up in milliseconds so we can quickly react to perceived danger or emergencies and prepares us to “fight or run” for our lives.
Problem is, our rapid-fire lives can lead us to repeatedly activate this stress response multiple times daily over non-life threatening situations, like being late to a meeting and stuck in traffic, or even by reading a frustrating work email from your boss.
We all know stress is bad for us, but did you realize that every stressful thought, feeling, or belief- we average more than 50 such responses every day- disables the body's ability to repair itself?" 2
The danger is that frequent stress episodes over long periods tend to wear down and weaken our immune system, making it difficult to fight Lyme. Here’s how it works:
The body gears up to help you “escape” a real -or imagined -danger. Our mind is conditioned so it often can’t tell the difference between a mad dog chasing you, or a “perceived” stress – like dealing with a difficult customer or family member.
We humans are wired so if we feel like we’re in an emergency, our “non- essential” body functions are shut down in those moments - reproduction, digestion and – so important for Lyme disease patients immune function, to conserve energy and allow maximum blood circulation. Then adrenaline speeds up heart rate & cortisol narrows arteries, amping up blood pressure to fuel muscles for action and to help you literally run away and escape danger.
In other words, cortisol virtually shuts-down your immune system in part to prioritize blood flow in an emergency. This makes sense – if there’s any interruption of blood flow to the heart or brain during a real, life-threatening emergency - you’re dead.
So, to prioritize your safety, our body disables activity of immune system “T- cells” - white blood cells that seek out and destroy harmful agents like bacteria, virus or other “pathogens” like Lyme.
Wait, what? As our multiple stress episodes play out day after day, our immune system continually shifts to sleep mode, letting the Lyme bacteria thrive?
Yes, like dismantling your armor while your enemy is firing bombs, “...cortisol blocks T-cells from proliferating...and has an ability to prevent the immune response, which can render individuals suffering from chronic stress highly vulnerable to infection”. 3
So, having Lyme and not controlling your stress can worsen symptoms– no matter what therapies you’ve tried. I realized no amount of antibiotics or natural Lyme therapies could help me beat the infection until I finally got better control of how I responded to stress, knowing we cant fully eliminate it from our lives.
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Don’t Let This Get the Best of You, It Could Fire Up Your Lyme Symptoms
I took control of my response to stress.
Looking back on my battle with Lyme disease, I never figured my stressful New York City lifestyle – tough job, sketchy sleep & diet, inconsistent exercise, dubious personal relationships - could all be making me sicker, more susceptible, and less able to conquer Lyme by weakening my immune system.
My advice is to do yourself a favor get a better handle on how you respond to stress – since it’s a part of life we can’t avoid. This can help your immune system to quiet your Lyme symptoms – it can’t do it without your help.
To beat stress I learned how to meditate (yes everyone can learn how!), got myself into psychotherapy to ease emotional show-stoppers, cleaned up my diet, exercised regularly, and eliminated many of my negative beliefs about life and relationships that truthfully, turned out to be the source of some of my worst stressful feelings.
Now with a smarter arsenal, the fight was really on.
Sources
1 Fear of Relapse, Jennifer Crystal, globalymealliance.org, March 15, 2017
2. Fear of Relapse, Jennifer Crystal, globalymealliance.org, March 15, 2017
3 .Mind Over Medicine:Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself; Lissa Rankin, M. D, Hay House Inc, 2013
4. The Physiology of Stress: Cortisol and the Hypothalamic- Pituitary Adrenal Axis, Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, February 3, 2011
5. Photo 4778219 © Abimages | Dreamstime.com