© 2023 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM. World Rights Reserved. http://www.kebba.com
Let Stress Create Disease…Or Wellness

© mike2focus on megapixl
Overall, do you feel basically well or basically challenged? Do you want to feel more zippy on every level? In the image above, we see a man who feels “okay” on average, but sometimes he is stressed out and sometimes he feels healthy and happy. The following figure, Effects of Increasing Negative Stress, illustrates the many potential negative health effects of stress if it is allowed to go uncontrolled for too long.

We often hear that stress can cause killer diseases such as high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity and diabetes. The Cleveland Clinic includes these symptoms as resulting from stress:
- Aches and pains.
- Chest pain or a feeling like your heart is racing.
- Exhaustion or trouble sleeping.
- Headaches, dizziness or shaking.
- High blood pressure.
- Muscle tension or jaw clenching.
- Stomach or digestive problems.
- Trouble having sex.
- Weak immune system.
The Heartmath Institute has found that the heart and brain actually influence each other’s functioning in 4 ongoing ways: neurologically, biochemically, biophysically, and electromagnetically. So we need to take care of our minds to take care of our hearts, literally. If we want to be well and stay well, it is vital that we learn to see things differently and respond differently, and learn to discharge strong negative feelings. An upcoming article will cover a number of simple techniques that can be used for discharge. You may be surprised at how enjoyable these methods can be.
Converse to the idea that the damage of stress is supposedly unstoppable, many severe health conditions have been completely reversed by reversing stress. The Figure, Effects of Increasing Positive Stress, illustrates the general accumulative effects of adding positives to one’s lifestyle.

A great example of this renewal process comes from hospices in the United Kingdom. There, the emphasis is on relaxation, complete pain relief, joyful fun, and companionship. And a study showed one-fifth of UK hospice patients got completely well and went home instead of dying. Research on the body’s master hormone may partially explain this phenomenon. The hormone, DHEA, is “dehydroepiandrosterone.” The following section explains the amazing role of DHEA and how you can learn to increase your body’s own production of it, increasing your own vitality. [If this section gets too sciencey, skip to the last 2 paragraphs of the article.]
Court Your Master Hormone for Vitality and Youth
Remember how your mother told you to go out and get some fresh air, sunshine, and exercise? It has now been medically proven that she was right! The master hormone, DHEA, is produced by the body when stimulated by fresh air, sunshine, exercise, and some other simple things. You will literally be stronger, feel better, and have greater health if you do these things.
DHEA is produced from cholesterol, as is progesterone. However, DHEA is used to make estrogen and testosterone. And because of hormone production feedback loops, DHEA is a major regulator for all other hormones, including the thyroid and pituitary functions. Ideal DHEA levels should be at least 750 ng/dL (nanograms per deciliter of blood) in men and at least 550 ng/dL in women.
Even if you have no formal background in life sciences, you are an expert on one area of wellness: yours! Only you know exactly how well you feel. Do you wake up stretching for joy and embracing how good you feel? Or do you wake up cursing the alarm clock and wishing you could smash it? Perhaps you have a medical diagnosis but you would love to feel five years younger. Your DHEA levels may be the key factor in how good you feel.
One year, I attended a medical conference on the latest in pain-treatment research. One of the doctors there was the famous neurosurgeon, C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Shealy is known as a pioneer in the field of pain research. He developed the TENS unit, which substitutes its electrical impulses for your body’s pain messages, greatly speeding recovery from surgeries. Dr. Shealy is especially known for his multimodal pain management philosophy and for founding the first biofeedback-based pain management program in the 1970s.
What surprised and impressed me the most about Dr. Shealy’s work was his emphasis on the role of general wellness in chronic pain management. A new paradigm of hormonal wellness has become integral to overall well-being, following a sharp rise in research on DHEA since the mid-1980s. Basic to hormonal balance is personal balance, which we can greatly affect for ourselves, free of charge. And for those without pain or chronic pain, the rules are the same for optimizing wellness through achieving a balance of DHEA and other, possibly more familiar, hormones.

© circotasu on megapixl
DHEA is both an antidepressant and a cognition enhancer in patients with major depression. Dr. Shealy says that patients with every major disease have low levels of DHEA. He includes such conditions as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, cancer, immune deficiencies, autoimmune disorders, and coronary artery disease. Stress, whether physical, mental, chemical, or electromagnetic (e.g. computers, televisions, fluorescent lights), can deplete your DHEA rapidly. Depleted DHEA can then put you on the path to major disease conditions.
In health food stores, you’ll see DHEA supplements in the sports supplements section. But don’t rush out to buy it yet! When you take DHEA as a supplement, your body absorbs that and stops making its own! So first, get your doctor to order a serum DHEA test from a lab s/he recommends. Due to uneven results from many labs, you may want to get a lab list from the American Holistic Medical Association. If your DHEA is indeed below ideal, consider some of the research findings and Dr. Shealy’s tips for self-help. These include:
- Learn meditation and do it thirty minutes per day. Meditators have higher serum DHEA.
- Apply natural progesterone, such as the cream or roll-on type derived from wild yams (dioscorea), to the skin to raise DHEA levels. Synthetic progesterone does not provide the full spectrum of natural progesterone’s biological activity, and it may have negative side effects.
- Exercise and spend an hour a day outside or in natural light.
- Make love more.
- Eat a diet low in fat, very low in sugar, and with a minimum of caffeine and alcohol.
- Don’t smoke anything.
- Keep a positive attitude.
- Get your DHEA retested in several months.
Basically, do anything that causes you BLISS, and this will raise your DHEA! And don’t you feel better now, in every way? Doesn’t this sound easy and interesting? Try these changes for even a week, and see how your vitality and happiness improve. Take two happy activities and call me in the morning.
As you Discover The Secret Energized You, push the possibilities. See how far the LifeTools can take you into energy, enthusiasm, and rejuvenation. You are now embarking on the most profound adventure: to Discover The Secret Energized You and redesign your life. Make the most of this adventure to make the most of your life! And that will be you, more and more Healthy Happy and Loving Lifesm!
Kebba Buckley Button is a stress/energy management expert, holistic healer, and award-winning author who celebrates life. She has a longtime natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within: Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine. The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office. They are also available in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the Franciscan Renewal Center bookstore and at the bookstore at St. Barnabas on the Desert Episcopal Church. Or simply email us to order: kebba@kebba.com . Thank you!

Books by Kebba Buckley Button
Like this:
Like Loading...