SEMINAR TOPICS
In the western world, stress is a major contributing factor in coronary artery disease, cancer, respiratory disorders, gastrointestinal illness, accidental injuries and suicide. Stress also aggravates chronic conditions such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and mental illness. Learn how acute and chronic stress affect the body, including the immune and cardiovascular systems, the brain and the ageing process. Practical tools are provided to treat and manage stress, reduce the physiological manifestations of stress and cope with stress-induced conditions. Stress and Disease is a useful course for health professionals both in their practices and daily lives.
Mechanisms of Stress-Related Diseases
The stress experience: understanding somatic symptoms: headaches, neck pain, shoulders, lower back, chest, gastro-intestinal tract and skin; immune suppression; insomnia and chronic fatigue.
Fight-or-flight response: acute and chronic effects of stress including immune suppression, cardiovascular pathology, stress-induced diabetes and acceleration of brain ageing; role of catecholamines and steroids.
Relaxation response: healthy consequences of coping with stressors; endorphins activity and other changes.
Depression
Diagnosis: endogenous/reactive, unipolar/bipolar, atypical, schizoaffective, chronic, mild dysthymic depressions.
Subtle symptoms: excessive somatic complaints, guilt, early morning awakenings, suppressed anger and loss of joy in everyday life (anhedonia).
Serotonin, depression and appetite: how reduced sunlight creates low levels of serotonin, carbohydrate craving and sleep disturbance; light therapy for seasonal affective disorders.
Antidepressants: Listening to Prozac: how new generation drugs ( eg, fluoxetine), tricyclics and St John's Wort alter mood, conduct and sense of self; benefits and risks.
Nondrug therapies: interpersonal and mood therapies; sleep alteration therapy; aerobic regimen.
Stress, Personality and Disease
Cancer: chronic stress, immune dysfunction and types of carcinomas; type-C cancer-prone personality; suppressed anger; a new risk factor; long-term survivors.
Cardiovascular disease: development of hypertension; new findings about type-A behaviour; depression, heart attacks and survival.
Eating disorders: managing excessive appetites for carbohydrates and fats; distinct neurotransmitters; pharmacologic and natural appetite suppressants; stress, personality and maintaining a healthy weight.
Stress and Geriatric Medicine
Ageing brain: how chronic stress accelerates brain ageing through glucocorticoids (stress-related hormones) that impair short-term memory.
Preventing accelerated ageing: developmental events and key coping skills.
Chronic care: patient control of treatment: eg, self-delivered analgesia.
Psychobiology of Stress Management
Individual differences: who gets sick and who stays well; hormones and cyclic personality shifts; understanding individual differences; anticipating response to stressors.
Coping style: importance of belief, denial and displacement of anxiety; influence upon recovery from disease; distinguishing between repressive vs healthy coping; how to discover and manage hidden stressors.
Choice: how sense of control enhances good health and increases patient hope.
Healthy pleasures: the biological connection between love, laughter, euphoria, sensuality, endogenous opioids and health promotion.