Is Stress Getting You Down?

by David Edelberg, MD

Do you feel "beaten up" -- tired, achy, stressed out, anxious, depressed, forgetful, headachy, or lacking energy and focus? You may be experiencing the Triple Whammy, a three-pronged assault on your body and mind consisting of: non-stop stress, a shortage of the feel-good brain chemical serotonin, and your ever-shifting hormones.

Here's the science behind the Triple Whammy:

• Women are poorly protected against the dangers of unchecked stress on their bodies because they have less serotonin, which acts as a vitally important stress buffer.
• Women are genetically predisposed to low serotonin, one of the feel-good neurotransmitters in our brains. Women actually have more serotonin than men, but it doesn't work as efficiently.
• Women have shifting tides of hormones -- which themselves control serotonin level and function -- monthly and throughout life.

Triple Whammy Disorders

Each Triple Whammy disorder involves this low level of serotonin. The disorders are either triggered or aggravated by stress and made worse by shifts in your female hormones, estrogen and progesterone. What also characterizes Triple Whammy disorders is their tendency to appear and reappear in different forms throughout a susceptible woman's life. What may have been called .nervous stomach. in your childhood may later manifest as irritable bowel syndrome during finals week in college, premenstrual migraines during your twenties, food cravings in your thirties, and fibromyalgia in your forties.

Triple Whammy disorders include: anxiety disorders; chronic fatigue syndrome; depression; fibromyalgia; irritable bowel syndrome; memory loss and brain fog; menopause transition symptoms; migraine headaches; postpartum depression; premenstrual syndrome (PMS); seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and wintertime blues; sleep problems; smoking; temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ); weight loss agonies.

Here's how to tackle the Triple Whammy.

Reducing stress: One of the three fundamentals of the TWC is reducing stress. You've probably already read (and read!) about stress and the damage it causes your mind and body. But perhaps this is the first time you've heard a doctor tell you that you're more vulnerable to stress than men. It's true. Because the amount of stress-protecting serotonin circulating in your body is far less than men have, you are under-protected against stress, which leaves you more vulnerable to Triple Whammy symptoms and disorders.

My recommendations for stress-relief include teaching yourself not to worry, walking in the sunlight, massage, meditation, t'ai chi, acupressure, yoga, acupuncture, and health spas. My prescription focuses on you taking time every day to melt away your stress in some definitely fun and interesting ways.

Boosting serotonin: The second element of the TWC is boosting your feel-good, stress-protecting serotonin levels as high as we can get them -- to protect you from stress and help you feel well again. If you've done any reading about antidepressants, you already know that these pharmaceuticals help increase the amount of serotonin available to you. But did you know there are many incredibly effective non-drug methods of increasing your serotonin? (I'm not against antidepressants, by the way. They're life-saving drugs for many people, but many of the women I treat can increase their serotonin levels just fine without antidepressants.)

In The Triple Whammy Cure, I lay out an easy serotonin-boosting plan to follow every day. This includes walking outside without sunglasses (so the light can enter your eyes and then your brain, where it boosts serotonin); timing your intake of carbs throughout the day; taking two supplements (B Vitamins and Fish Oil) that provide the raw materials for serotonin; and supplementing those with the herb St. John's Wort and the amino acid 5HTP if needed.