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Sermon Illustrations: Stress

You know you're in trouble if, while being wheeled into Intensive Care, you try to answer your mobile.

The greatest industrial cost in the USA is executives having heart attacks. Tom Marshall

It's this distress that we normally mean when we use the term stress. It's such a common problem that it's estimated that "about one-fifth of all prescriptions given to patients in America, the United Kingdom and most other Western countries are for sleeping pills, tranquillisers or anti-depressants. It seems our greatest international drug addiction problem is not one of teenagers taking marijuana or heroin, but middle-agers taking tranquillisers. The comment has been made.....that if all the people on tranquillisers were banned from driving or operating machinery, the world's economy would collapse overnight."1

Driving is one of the sources of stress. Researchers conducted a study in San Francisco a number of years ago. Businessmen were asked to wear a pulse counter on their wrists, and at set times during the day to note down their pulse rate and what they were doing at the time. These men were battling deadlines, involved in important business deals, arguing with competitors and generally living at a frantic pace. Yet the time when they were most stirred up, as measured by their pulse rates was when driving to and from work.

Short-term stresses like speaking in public, … boost your immune system in ways that tend to keep you out of the coffin, not put you in it. Time 19-7-04 p 54

In a 2001 study of 158 hospital nurses, those who faced considerable work demands but coped with the challenge were more likely to say they were in good health than those who felt they couldn't get the job done. Stress that you can manage may also boost immune function. In a study at Amsterdam's Academic Centre for Dentistry, researchers put volunteers through two stressful experiences. In the first, timed task that required memorising a list followed by a short test, the subjects believed they had control over the outcome. In the second task, they weren't in control: they had to sit through a gory video on surgical procedures. Those who did well on the memory test had an increase in immunoglobulin A, an antibody that's the body's first line of defence against germs. The volunteers who sat through video experienced a downturn in levels of the antibody. Stress also prompts the body to produce adrenaline and cortisol. In short bursts these hormones have a positive effect, including improved memory function. "Adrenalin and cortisol enhance how nerve cells handle information and put it into storage," … Reader's Digest November 2004 p 175

Peak-hour travellers face more stress than fighter pilots or riot police. So say UK researchers who found that people experience increase in blood pressure and heart rate, as well as a surge in levels of cortisol, a hormone secreted when the body is under pressure. Psychologist David Lewis explains that travellers' brains briefly shut out the outside world - dubbed "commuter amnesia". Reader's Digest March 2005 p 12

We need to take regular breaks: "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."2

The US FDA has approved a Prozac-type dug for depressed dogs. This is good, because it's hard for dogs to get therapy - they're never allowed on the couch. Colin Quinn on Saturday Night Live as quoted in Reader's Digest October, 2006 p 41

It was 28th April, 1988 and flight 243 was en route to Honolulu with 89 passengers. Twenty-three minutes after take-off, a small section of the roof was suddenly torn away. The sudden decompression resulted in the entire top of the aircraft - from behind the cockpit to the forewing - being ripped off. Flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing was sucked right out of the plane to her death. When the captain looked behind him, all he saw was blue sky. Despite everything, an emergency landing was made ten minutes later, with the flight attendant being the only fatality. A full-scale investigation was launched. The result? It was determined that the problem was caused by metal fatigue. Metal fatigue is the "progressive, permanent structural damage"30 that occurs when it is subjected to normal stresses over a prolonged period.

1 Stanton, Harry The Stress Factor p63
2 North Lakes Messenger 4-9-06 p10
3 Wikipedia

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