Modern Living: Stress, Kryptonite, and Resilience

Something doesn't compute.

As a health-minded individual, when you look around, you can’t help but think that something is terribly wrong with our species. If we slow down, take a breath, and observe our surroundings, it becomes very obvious very fast. Just think, despite all of our incredible technological and scientific advances, instant global communication systems, a litany of genius thinkers and innovators, and entire libraries of information at our fingertips… in the world of health, we’ve only gotten worse.

I’m here to yank you out of your sleeping bag. Humans are stressed, obese, crippled with pain, and chronically sick. Despite the world getting smarter, humans are getting sicker, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting better anytime soon.

It’s 2023, and we’re still in the midst of a serious health crisis. But, there is a crisis behind the crisis. The problem I’m talking about has paved the way for the Covid crisis.

The crisis that I speak of, is the crisis of modern morbidity.

Mor·bid·i·ty

/môrˈbidədē/

noun

• 
  

We’re experiencing record rates of obesity, chronic disease, autoimmunity, mental anguish, and orthopedic pain.

Our medical model has been designed to listen for symptoms, identify a diagnosis, and spit out a therapeutic remedy (usually drugs, surgery, or yet another specialist). It's made a lot of our best and brightest minds (our physicians) closed-minded pharmaceutical vending machines that have to play by the machine owners' rules. Over time this has developed and reinforced the “pill for every ill”, instant gratification mentality that plagues much of our society today. For nearly a century now, most medical office visits go like this…

• Horrifying low back pain?- Here's a drug.

• Gnarly headaches? - Here’s a drug.

• Depressed?- Here’s a drug.

• Can’t focus?- Here's a drug.

• Back again with that horrifying back pain? Whatever you were doing when this happened, just stop doing that. And here’s a different drug, we don’t know, we think it’s arthritis. 

Doc, it happened getting off the toilet?

NO TOILETS. NON-NEGOTIABLE. OR IT WILL GET WORSE, NEXT TIME YOU COULD BE PARALYZED.

*dude goes home and sledgehammer’s his toilets*

Smh.

Causes have Causes

This may seem very elementary… But symptoms are often the cause of someone's anguish, but not the cause of their problem. Most of the time our medical system intervenes with the former and doesn’t bother to think about the latter. They hack into the system a step too late, and sometimes it appears to work... until it doesn’t anymore.

So, doesn’t addressing the cause sound like a better option? Have you ever thought about the fraction of modern medicine that is actually addressing causes instead of just managing symptoms? Get ready to do some critical thinking. Being super symptom-focused, we miss the fact that symptoms are message systems indicating a problem.

We’ve all heard that analogy of the “check engine light” coming on… Unless you’re in significant denial (many of us are these days)... you do your best to figure out why the light is on. Right? You don’t throw electrical tape over the light and pretend it isn’t on. That’s not only insane, but it's also dangerous.

Now, tell me how taking an opioid pain-killer for a tissue-damage-related mechanical problem is any different. Okay, I'll give you the answer... It's different because not only is the original issue not addressed leading to a potentially dangerous progression, the dang therapy of choice (drug) comes with potentially addicting qualities and a whole host of side effects completely unrelated to the mechanism by which it's "supposed" to help the condition. Ladies and gentlemen, please help me understand how this process (which happens with thousands of drugs and conditions across medicine) is scientific.

Anyways, pharmaceutical drugs are the main treatment modality used in "scientific" medicine today. I put "scientific" in air quotes because you'd be shocked at how little mainstream medicine is actually "following the science".

According to data from the CDC, nearly half of Americans use at least one prescription drug regularly for chronic health problems [3]. Many people don't realize that the drugs they're taking could worsen their condition.

In fact, according to the CDC:

• Over 48% of respondents used at least one prescription drug in the past 30 days

• 24% used three or more

• almost 13% used up to 5 or more

Medication treatments involved nearly 74% of physician outpatient visits and more than 80% of hospital emergency department visits. Many of the most commonly prescribed drugs (like statins and proton pump inhibitors or PPIs, for example) have a weakness in the mainstream medical model: its tendency to treat the symptoms or effects of an illness rather than the cause.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am grateful for modern medicine, and there is a time and place (especially in emergencies) when our hyper-reactive (rather than proactive) medical system is downright incredible. If you survive taking a bullet, getting hit by a bus or experience a acute life-threatening infection or reaction, modern medicine can SAVE YOUR LIFE.

However, most of the sickness that plagues the world right now is chronic lifestyle-related preventable illness. These conditions progress over time and don't improve overnight especially if you're not addressing what brought them on.

Currently, 74% of Americans are considered overweight. Of those, 43% are considered clinically obese (a BMI over 30) [2].

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine used current trends and projected by 2030:

• One in two adults in the U.S. will be considered obese.

• One in four will be considered severely obese, with a BMI of 40 or higher.

• And obesity rates will climb to over 50% in over 29 states.

Now before we jump on this "big-is-beautiful" trend, let’s understand that obesity has been directly linked to:

Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, depression, anxiety, pregnancy complications, kidney disease, and fatty liver disease.

All that up there. Not good.

And it’s not just affecting adults, childhood obesity rates (age 5-11) jumped nearly 10% from 36.2% to 45.7% just during the pandemic. [1] Read that last sentence one more time.

It’s safe to say that the collective health trends in this country, are taking a nose dive. I’ve even heard them, very eloquently I might add, referred to as FUBAR (that’s “F’d up beyond all recognition” for those of you who didn’t go to college or did, and took it way too seriously). It’s time to admit that we are really bad at preventing or reversing chronic lifestyle-related preventable illnesses. Because, well, we're not even trying to. Our system isn’t built to reverse or prevent anything, rather, just manages it… in a very very profitable way.

Now, let’s talk about you, If you are average...

• You have a 23 percent chance of dying from heart disease. 

• You have a 25 percent chance of diabetes. 

• You have a 10 percent chance of developing Alzheimer’s. 

• You have a 40 percent chance of cancer and a 20 percent risk of dying from it.

Today, cardiovascular diseases, various cancers, and diabetes account for almost 70 percent of all deaths in the United States. Guess what all of these have in common? They are all chronic lifestyle-related, preventable illnesses.

This country has found a way to put a crew of men on the moon in what looks like a cheap county-fair kiddie ride, but we haven’t cured simple diseases like herpes. Obesity is climbing at a breakneck speed. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia, and depression are all out of control.

The cause of a dis-ease within a biological system is usually a dis-function within the system. This is where the above-mentioned medical system swoops in and offers you an opinion. Sometimes dysfunction is identified, a diagnosis is made, and a prescription is written. Problem solved, right? Nope. A label and some electrical tape rarely equate to a resolution. However, there’s a good chance you may temporarily forget about the symptoms, the dysfunction, and the label.

Whatever caused the dysfunction is rarely investigated. It’s usually too complex and time-consuming. If your symptoms can be managed quickly and you can get out of the overwhelmed doctor's hair ASAP that's a win for him/her and whatever pharmaceutical company he/she referred you to via prescription.

Health is our natural state and should be a natural experience. Human physiology is incredible. The insanely vast amount of biochemical processes happening at any given millisecond, just to keep you alive, is staggering.

Incredible Human Physiology Facts

But that incredible physiology has some prerequisites it needs to maintain homeostatic balance and harmony, and more now than ever, there are an incredible amount of environmental stressors trying to knock us out of that balance. So much so, that not only does health NOT seem like our natural state, but at times it feels like we have to FIGHT to maintain it.

If we appreciate that our bodies are incredible all on their own, then we have to be willing to dive deeper into what’s causing the incredible amount of dysfunction that's making so many people sick. This is where we will come up with more effective, efficient, and sustainable solutions. Finding the cause of the cause gets confusing, but this is usually where we encounter the modern deluge of different forms of STRESS.

Kryptonite: PCE Stress.

Modern-day stress is complex. It takes many forms. I’ve found it easiest to understand stress when broken into 3 main categories; physical/biomechanical, chemical, and emotional/mental. Chiropractors (of which I am one) have been talking about this concept for over a hundred years, first described as the 3 T’s: thoughts, traumas, and toxins, back in the early 1900s. I’m biased, but I think those quacky chiropractors were way ahead of their time. These three stress categories can be further subdivided into the macro and the micro. See the diagram with examples in the figure below.

Physical, Chemical, Emotional STRESS

When you understand the many different categories of stress, you also realize there's no escaping it while living in this modern world. We are bombarded. It’s all around us, all the time. Especially the micro-stressors that fly under the radar, like Kryptonite dust, wearing Super-you down.

“Imagine that you’re Superman (or Superwoman). One day, Lex Luthor pulverizes some kryptonite and sprinkles just a little bit of it around your house. If you eat (or inhale) a small amount of kryptonite dust, it won’t kill you. You’ll still be able to push through the day and save people, you’ll just feel slightly off. In fact, you’ll get used to feeling that way and believe it’s normal. But as you keep ingesting a little bit more kryptonite every day, your ability to help people will slowly, invisibly decline until your body reaches the point where it’s spending all of its energy trying to overcome the effects of the poison.”

-Dave Asprey, Head Strong.

The good news is, “Momma didn’t raise Superman to be no punk”.

It’s a no-brainer that we need to either eliminate or limit the kryptonite exposure, but what if there’s literally no getting away from it? Have no fear. We are incredibly adaptive organisms. Our lifestyles, habits, behaviors, and choices can manage, mitigate, and buffer stress. Shoot, some stressors can even be leveraged for positive health gains (I.e cryotherapy, strength training, etc.) The bad news is, just the same, our lifestyles, habits, behaviors, and choices can pour on the stress, which can bio-accumulate and destroy our health.

Considering some of the figures we discussed earlier, which direction do you think most Americans are heading? Just take a look around, and the answer becomes pretty obvious.

So let’s chat a little more about this “bio-accumulation” of stress. Let’s imagine a cup that represents how much stress we can handle before there is a breakdown in the system, somewhere. As you imagine, the breakdown can be physical/biomechanical, mental/emotional, or biochemical as well.. but all the stressors can contribute to that breakdown (I.e. you don’t have to have to *just* be physically overwhelmed to have a physical breakdown).

It gets complex, but check out this video of Dr. Greg Lehman explaining this concept as it relates to orthopedic pain.

Now, applying the same illogical thinking that’s involved with most medical treatment models these days, we would just treat the symptoms of the stress. We just keep adding, we never subtract.

*Enter alcohol, anti-depressants, anxiolytics, painkillers, muscle relaxers, sleep aids, BP/cholesterol meds, etc., etc.*

There also have been entire industries crafted with attempts at *stress reduction*. The media loves this stuff. You know, just sit in a certain yoga pose, deep breath, rehearse identifying as a non-stressed person, and all your problems fade away.

Yeah right.

I think a more effective strategy would be doing a full lifestyle audit like this:

• Be still and establish some self-awareness.

• Modify, change, reduce, or limit the big bricks weighing you down.

• Slowly learn and sustainably introduce positive habits and behaviors that will build your resilience to stress resulting in an increased capacity to handle modern living.

For anything outside of acute trauma, reaction, toxicity, or infection, this is the only way to truly heal or recover from a chronic lifestyle-related ailment.

There is no reason to stress about the stress or play the victim. Life is tough, but so are human beings. As with most challenges, there is usually a lesson to learn if you’re willing to think critically enough and put in the work.

"You grow through what you go through."

It’s important to understand that we often can use stress, or what some researchers have dubbed “eustress”. Of course, this is no simple feat. It requires some optimism, logic, effort, and creativity. All of which seems to be missing in the majority of our modern medical treatments.

RESILIENCE: Building a bigger, better cup.

Dealing with a patient's symptoms is essential. But true health care goes beyond symptoms and into mitigating the harmful effects of that person's stress, and building a better capacity to deal with those stressors in the future. This is what we call resilience.

Resilience is achieved through effort. Brick by brick, day by day. Utilizing the four main elementz of health. These elements of health date back to our ancient ancestry, and are the four main categories that contribute to the foundations of human health.

Dr.E's Elementz of Health

By utilizing and optimizing these elements effectively, efficiently, and sustainably… one is essentially building resilience, and beating back the ability of stress to overwhelm and break you down. Some of these individual efforts may serve the role of just puncturing the cup and allowing some water out (this is good, you have to start somewhere). However, by getting most of them right, most of the time - You’re building a bigger cup.

Sounds simple, right? It is. But is it easy? Not at all.

However, it’s the difference between chronic pain and suffering, and a life full of abundant health, resilience, and quality of living.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”

-Benjamin Franklin

Sounds worth it, right?

I’ve given many talks in my community on this topic. I’ve seen many *lightbulbs* come on. But, I’ve come to find THREE major hurdles when it comes to people actually implementing these ideas, moving from theory to practice, and proactively building their resilience.

The first one is the “convenience culture” / instant gratification conditioning we’ve adopted as western culture has been “modernized” and outsourced much of its needs to big corporations and technological advances. Everything is at our fingertips. We rarely wait for anything...

• Want to watch a movie, boom pop on Netflix.

• Got a question that’s been burning in your mind.. Between Siri and Google.. You’ll have an answer immediately. 

• Need dinner, there's a drive-through a block away… or shoot, don’t even bother getting off the couch, Uber Eats will practically come put it on your coffee table.

• Crippling headache from drinking your face off last night? Slam 3 Ibuprofen, crush some junk food, and keep it moving…

• Can’t focus or find the energy to put toward the project you really need to get done..? Let’s wash some Adderall down with some expresso and go to town.

Just to be candid, I’m guilty of nearly all of these at one point in my life. Nobody is perfect all the time. Modern times have made all of them so convenient that they’re hard to say no to. It usually takes some sort of significant health shake-up or realization to overcome their grip on us. We have to find a way to recognize, understand, and emphasize the importance of how this way of living isn’t meeting our biological needs. Hence, the epidemic of chronic disease.

I’m not advocating we go back to a paleolithic lifestyle (though this would be tremendously helpful for many), I’m advocating we realize and act upon the fact that human physiology, albeit incredible and resilient, is always evolving and adapting over time. It’s adapting to how we support it. It’s adapting to what we consume, how we move, what we think, and how we rest and unplug, day in and day out. We have to realize that we control those adaptations with our habits and lifestyles and need to do better, proactively.

The second major hurdle is the victim mentality. We really need to toughen up. As discussed in the previous hurdle, “convenience culture” has really softened us up as a species. There is a lot of entitlement that comes along with having so much, so easy, for so long. Our ability to handle adversity dwindles, and in many ways dealing with less adversity makes us less resilient. I love the quote that I’ve heard floating around a handful of different podcasts and audiobooks that goes like this:

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times”

Another factor contributing to the victim mindset is again, our medical system. Medicine has leaned so far into the genetic (family history) explanation for a disease that it has us believe many things are pre-set and cannot change. We’re stuck with what we got. This is unproductive and disempowering. As “epigenetics'' is an emerging field of study, the “genetic model” is being debunked every day and we’re finding out more and more that..“genetics load the gun, but your lifestyle pulls the trigger” as far as developing certain dis-ease within the body and mind.

Another victim mindset trigger is the media. The news, social media, movies, and tv shows prop up the material gods and goddesses in Hollywood (I used the little g on purpose). Ironically, at the same time, they pump out all the stories of unfairness/injustice and sensationalize all the bad things happening in the world. Modern marketing has hacked our brains and knows what drives attention, clicks, and consumer activity. Keeping you obsessed with material belongings, and feeling sorry for yourself keeps you buying whatever they deem will make you feel better.

The third hurdle is a lack of personal responsibility and accountability. The victim mentality discussed earlier plays a role here, but I believe there has been a collective decay of empathy via the normalization of immorality and violence in video games, media, and movies. I also think there is something to be said of the lack of immediate repercussions for the keyboard critics spewing harmful opinions across social platforms. I believe free speech is vitally important, but I see firsthand how this degrades our natural accountability mechanisms and normalizes people saying things they would, likely, never say in face-to-face conversation. I sometimes convince myself Twitter was built for this purpose and this purpose only. #Haterverse

At the end of the day, we need to realize that how we feel is dictated by us, our own health habits, and our very own habitual thought patterns. Nobody can hack into your neurochemistry and make you feel a certain way, yet.

The Path Forward

As far as solutions, I believe this is the best place to start tackling THIS pandemic…

1. Recognize and release the grip convenience culture has on us.

2. Ditch the victim mindset, embrace the ideas of epigenetics and let it empower us.

3. Realize that our health, happiness, and the stressors we expose ourselves to are largely OUR responsibility. We build our quality of life day by day, brick by brick, via building resilience to the stress of modern times. This requires us to educate ourselves, and..

4. Proactively eat better, move better, think better, and recuperate better.

What do they say is the beginning of every 12-step program? Realizing and accepting that we have a problem. *answering for a friend*

We have to recognize we have a serious problem on our hands and start somewhere.

I’m hoping if people can tweak their perspective on where pain, symptoms, sickness, and most dis-ease begin, they may move towards choosing better, doing better, and getting more involved in their own health.

One of my old mentors’ signature phrases was that he was encouraging you to

“take your health, into your own hands”

After 10 years of health education and practice, I can’t state it any better. The key to health, longevity, looking better, and feeling better starts with personal responsibility, and forging better personal habits around health.

In essence, we need to move from theory to practice. Gone are the days of thinking “if we knew better we’d do better”. There are literally tons of helpful resources out there. It doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to be consistent.

We need to take it upon ourselves to think better, eat better, move better, and recupe better in order to do better as human beings. Further prioritizing our daily health education, efforts, and most importantly - habits - that contribute to building resilience day by day, brick by brick.

Here’s to laying some bricks daily, building bigger cups, and fulfilling our missions on this planet.

Stay Resilient My Friends,

Dr. E

About The Author

Dr. Matt Eichler is a Chiropractic Physician, functional medicine practitioner, fitness competitor, and health coach in the Tampa Bay area. Throughout his 8-year career, he has helped an estimated 5,000 unique patients better their health in some way. He is also the founder and CEO of the online health and fitness coaching company; Element X. He has trained and studied under some of the best the health & fitness industries offer and has recently been transitioning from just adjusting spines to also adjusting lifestyles in order to make a more long-lasting and important impact.

References

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2783690?fbclid=IwAR2lhat_LaFJk7llHrXfT2vsOZNlRUkSGSkLAPfJj7t0fQhOCF8oUdUq6fE [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/most-american-adults-are-overweight/2020/12/18/faefa834-408d-11eb-9453-fc36ba051781_story.html [3] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/drug-use-therapeutic.htm [4] https://drjohnrusin.com/crisis-mode-the-state-of-health-fitness

Health Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any health conditions, nor should it be considered a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult with your doctor or qualified healthcare provider before starting any new health program, making changes to your diet, taking supplements, or if you have questions about your medical condition. Your health decisions should be based on discussions with your healthcare team, not on the content you read online.