When Stress Makes You Sick

By Fay Jones

If you’ve ever “done everything right” and still suffered with illness or disease, you may have already discovered this. Looking for solutions from the outside – from doctors, pills, surgeries, therapies, etc. – can only go so far. Unless you also look at your health from the inside out, your symptoms will often return.

When stress makes you sick, it’s a wake-up call. It’s time to go inside, be with yourself, and learn to listen to your body. As you become more mindful, you begin to realize that it is your ally, not your enemy. Health complaints, illnesses and even side-effects from medications are simply your body’s way of speaking to you. It’s trying to get your attention – before it’s too late. It’s so important to stop judging your body and find some gratitude for this sacred communication.

In this book, Fay Jones, MS, L.Ac., breaks down the stress response and explains why it can be so harmful to your body. She explores self-awareness and self-care practices as key to minimizing that stress. While this is not the only way to achieve true health, it is often the missing ingredient that will allow you to break through to higher levels of health and stay healthier longer!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fay Jones
• Release date: Sep 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9780988312906

Fay Jones

Fay Jones is a Board Certified Acupuncturist and a Health Educator whose undisputed favorite area of specialty is stress, stress-reduction and self-care. She is so passionate about this field partly because of her own challenging personal health history, which has included fertility issues, multiple surgeries and “cancer scares.” The combination of her personal experience and professional expertise has given her a deep compassion for her patients and all they deal with; and her 25+ years working with patients has helped her to develop and fine-tune her unique approach to health and wellness. When STRESS Makes You SICK was borne out of her long-standing belief that self-care is our single most accessible tool for creating optimal health. . . and something we are all capable of. Fay truly practices what she preaches – because it helps her feel good! She has a daily meditation and yoga practice and recharges as often as possible with travel, skiing, time with friends and R & R at the beach. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter, is a busy mom (with lots of balls in the air at any given moment), loves teaching workshops and working with groups, and maintains a private acupuncture practice in the San Fernando Valley.

Book preview

when Stress

makes you Sick

A Mind/Body Approach

To Breakthrough Health

Fay Jones, MS, L.Ac.

When Stress Makes You Sick

Copyright 2012, Fay Jones, MS, L.Ac.

All rights reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-0-9883129-0-6

Smashwords Edition

Published by Randa Press, Van Nuys, California

E-mail: [e-mail]

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic of mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system—except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or on the Worldwide Web—without permission in writing from the publisher or the publisher’s representative.

The information in this book has not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to treat, diagnose, cure or prevent any disease. This information is for your consideration and is not intended as a substitute for the advice or medical care of a qualified health care professional and you should seek the advice of your health care professional before undertaking any dietary or lifestyle changes. The material provided is for educational purposes only and does not create or substitute for a professional doctor-patient relationship. Names of real patients have been changed to protect their privacy.

Smashwords Licensing Statement

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For information, please e-mail the author at: [e-mail]

Cover and interior design by OPA Author Services, Scottsdale, Arizona

Contact e-mail: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 – THE ANATOMY OF STRESS

Chapter 2 – THE RELAXATION RESPONSE

Chapter 3 – M IS FOR MINDFULNESS

Chapter 4 – A IS FOR ATTITUDES and BELIEFS

Chapter 5 – G IS FOR GRATITUDE

Chapter 6 – I IS FOR INSPIRATION

Chapter 7 – C IS FOR CONNECTION

Chapter 8 – CONCLUSIONS and NEXT STEPS

About the Author

Dedication

As is true with every move I make, this is for my daughter, Sydney, and my husband, Keith. I love you both more than words could ever say.

Acknowledgments

This book has been a long time coming, and there are many people to thank for their support through the process. First, I want to acknowledge my patients and all you have taught me over the years. Without you, I would have nothing to teach.

Next, I must thank my family and their unending support of both me and my work. I am so grateful to my mom, Nancy Marshutz, for loving me and my family so much and for her bottomless well of physical, emotional and spiritual help over the years; to my husband, Keith, and daughter, Sydney, for allowing me the precious time to be as I researched and wrote for hours on end (and only complaining occasionally on those days when dinner consisted of a sandwich and soup from a box!); and to my sister, Gillian Cilibrasi, for being an incredible cheerleader and a continual wealth of information.

I’d also like to give a shout-out to my Mastermind group, especially Kelly Harrington and Jaime Saginor for their ongoing enthusiasm and inspiration.

Finally, while my mom was my midwife when my daughter was born, I have to acknowledge my dad, Paul McNeese, for being my midwife for the birth of this book. He always believed in me when I told him I had a book inside me. He was encouraging and patient as the topic became more refined, and he read and responded to more revisions and alterations than any editor should have to. The gestation was a long one, but because of his expertise, experience and love, the actual birth was very quick and relatively painless. I am filled with gratitude for his gentle guidance.

INTRODUCTION

Why this book?

As a society, we are sick—and stress is making us sicker. Based on almost one billion documented office visits a year, approximately $50—$100 billion dollars are spent annually on seeing doctors in the United States alone. This doesn’t even include surgeries, lab testing, medications or therapies of any kind.

Obesity has become epidemic. Germs have become resistant to the drugs we use to treat them. Cancers, heart disease, diabetes and depression riddle our population. So much of our imbalance is a result of stress and I think most of us don’t even know where to begin to make it better. We’re sick and out-of-touch with our bodies and arrogant enough to hope that we can return to health with just a pill, not wishing to change any of the unhealthy things we’ve done to get us where we are.

As a Chinese Medicine practitioner and simply one who lives in this world, I have seen a lot of the physical and emotional fallout that has resulted from all this stress. I’ve also had my fair share of stress-related health issues, as well. After I turned 40, my life got a little complicated. I had three surgeries in three years to remove growths that my doctors thought might be cancers.

To my relief, they were all benign, but the whole experience really brought my attention to the high levels of stress I had been dealing with. I was just finishing graduate school and getting ready to take my Boards. My daughter was a toddler, and I was still recovering from a six-year-long fertility journey.

I was clearly dealing with stress and, frankly, not doing it very well. I wasn’t getting enough rest or exercise, I didn’t have any sort of an internal practice. I was still breast-feeding and regularly giving in to my sugar cravings. My body, mind and spirit were stretched to the limit.

As I started working with my patients, I began to listen to the kinds of advice I was giving them. They always say you teach what you most need to learn, and I can see now, I was no exception. I was driven to discover better ways of approaching health for both myself and my patients. The methods I’ve found to be most helpful are tried and proven and have taken form as this book.

Why now?

For the last decade or so, there has been a lot of talk about December 21, 2012. This is the end of the Mayan calendar and has been touted as being the end of the world. I have never believed that it was heralding the end of anything—except perhaps the end of the world as we know it. I’ve often wondered whether this would be good news or bad news.

In the last 20 years, the illusion of our flourishing economy has shattered. The housing bubble has burst, banks have failed, Mother Nature has been ranting in most destructive ways, and the level and extent of dis-ease in our bodies has gotten worse, not better. So, if this is the end of the world as we know it, then as Michael Stipe and the guys from the rock band R.E.M. would say, I feel fine.

A new paradigm

We are being called into a new paradigm—one of awareness. One in which we are being asked to step out of our desires, out of our illusion of separateness, out of our minds. Coming back into our bodies now can help us to connect with ourselves, with each other, with whatever incarnation of a higher power we hold, and can even inspire us to redefine and strive for a new kind of health.

I was born in the sixties, a time when the seeds of this type of awareness had begun to germinate. Although this new way of approaching life started to blossom in the ’60s and ’70s, the medical world began to change during this time, too. Medicine became more symptom driven and began to depend pretty heavily on the pharmaceutical industry. There seemed to be a pill for just about everything that ailed us.

Life in general and consciousness in particular, was obscured for the next few decades as consumerism, greed, and the pursuit of wealth took center stage. Maybe you know the saying, Money can’t buy happiness. The jury may still be out on that one, but based on what I’ve seen in my practice, I’d have to say it hasn’t been very good at buying health.

Since the 1970s, the focus on health has expanded but, in my opinion, the approach has been lacking simply because of the direction of that focus. The