Graves Disease Stress Management

by Svetla Bankova

As we all ready heard from our GP or family practitioner, or endocrinologist- factors that cause Graves’ Disease are unknown- at least to the scientists. However they all seems to agree that stress is one of the major factors that triggers this disease, even though they can not explain how exactly this happens in practice.

Not only this- stress causes almost all diseases- directly or indirectly. I say almost- because if you lived somewhere near Chernobyl, that evidently is not your factor.

Stress for me means two things:

 1.“I have to do too many things for too little time” or

 2. “I have to do things that I don’t want to do at all, but I have to”

In either of the cases I get stressed- my blood pressure goes up, I feel like I am out of control, I am sweating, my pulse goes up. This was especially very hard for me when I was diagnosed with Graves’ Disease. My body on a physical level is fighting with my mind, which has its own reasons why I should do this and that.

 In order to solve the problem with the stress and improve your overall condition, especially when diagnosed with Graves’ Disease you have to either:

1. change the circumstances
2. change how to react on them
3. or both

When you make choice #1 here are a few things you can do to improve the situation:

Make a brief list of your priorities, i.e. family, kids, me, work, hobbies etc. I would suggest to put “me” in front of everything else. Simply because if you are not happy or healthy, nobody else will be. Trust me. 

Here are some stress management advices. Divide the things you have to do by the following order of importance

•  Urgent and Important (you have to take care of them NOW)

• Not Urgent, but Important (things like your mortgage, bills that are important but can wait)

• Urgent, but not Important (these are things that are important to someone else, but not to you, but you have been asked to them)

• Not Urgent and Not Important- (needless to say- they go to the trash)

Do it everyday, until it becomes a habit. You’ll see how easily you’ll drop a lot of things from your To-Do-List just because you’ll see that they are no longer important.

 Choice # 2- change how to react on them

 That simply means that when you are asked to do things that you don’t want to do, it’s not your job, somebody else can do them better than you, they are not your obligation etc. you just say “NO’ instead of taking the task and then getting stressed, angry, guilty, anxious etc – a whole bouquet of poisonous feelings that will make worse your Graves’ Disease or any other disease as a matter of fact.

Those are the only two ways that I know and I know that they work perfectly, so try them on and see what happens.

May be you’ll feel much better, and mostly important stress free, which was the  reason for your Graves Disease on a very first place.

Create your Not-To-Do list, which happen to be as important as your To Do List. In this list you should include things that you decided not to do, in order to keep you stress- free.

No  matter what, remain calm and composed, for even in the worst situations you’ll find opportunities. Staying calm under pressure produces crucial amounts of a key neurochemical, nitric oxide, throughout the body. Nictric oxide is unusually small, but powerful molecule that switches on the glowing light in fireflies. Inside humans, it neutralizes the negative effects of stress hormones such as norepinephrine that cause rapid heart rate, high blood pressure, tension, anger and anxiety. Nitric oxide signals the brain to release calming neurochemicals such as dopamine and endorphins. Often this enables you to reach a heightened level of action, mood, creativity or performance. To master this kind of attention under pressure instead of just relying on expending energy to move you forward, you must engage with your challenges by keeping physical tension levels low, freeing yourself to try different instead of harder.

I also suggest to check out my newest book “Life Balance Manual for Graves’ Disease and Hyperthyroidism”. You can discover a lot of useful tools how to conquer your stress levels once and forever.