Can I Get an Amen!
September 22, 2009
Just got done watching KWBU’s “The Ghost in Your Genes” (blew my mind and gave me goose-bumps…so sue me, I’m a nerd), and am watching KWBU’s “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” and it is blowin’ my mind as we speak. Allow me to explain…
I work with people who are homeless, have mental illnesses and/or substance addictions and have, generally speaking, had majorly stressful lives (in the physically/sexually/emotionally-abused-by-numerous-people-over-time- sort-of-way). In a very intimate way, they have taught me that chronic stress is one of the most dangerous threats to a human’s health and happiness. Although I am a strong argumentative writer, I know what words I could write about what I have just seen could not have the same mind-blowing power as those I have posted below (from the PBS website):
“In this revelatory film, discoveries occur in an extraordinary range of places, from baboon troops on the plains of East Africa to the office cubes of government bureaucrats in London to neuroscience labs at the nation’s leading research universities. Groundbreaking research reveals surprising facts about the impact of stress on our bodies: how it can shrink our brains, add fat to our bellies and even unravel our chromosomes. Understanding how stress works can help us figure out ways to combat it and mitigate negative impacts on our health.”
I think I liked the film so much because it put into concise terms what I think about the ill effects of living in a society that admires and even encourages people who do 2, 3, 4, or 5 things at once, which only contributes to the perpetual stress that is clogging our arteries, creating fat that suffocates our visceral organs, and descimates vital neural connections that are important to our ability to remember and concentrate.
The work of Robert Sapolsky is an extraordinary connection between our environment and our internal biological processes. It has the potential to dramatically change the way we conceptualize mental illness, generational poverty, and chronic homelessness. I have posted the direct link to the film’s website:
http://killerstress.stanford.edu/. Enjoy!
