Lifestyle Corner

When it comes to coping with the stress of life, science has now provided us with valuable insights into the differences between men and women and how we deal with the stress of everyday life. This new knowledge can help women cope in a healthy way with life's daily challenges. So, how different are we?

We're hooked up differently. Our brains and nervous systems control our response to stress and how it affects us physically and emotionally.

According to Philip Gold MD, Chief of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Neuroendocrine Branch, "It appears that women are born with stress response systems that are exquisitely sensitive, to enhance their ability to caregive throughout life."

The dark side of our wonderful ability to plan and care for others is that our skills are rarely applied to ourselves. This skill requires learning how to develop boundaries and limits for our caregiving activities, so that there's also room for caring for ourselves. This is a tough thing for most women to do. Many women's self-esteem is built on how much they give to and provide for others not on how much or what we do for ourselves. Guilt is a major player here.

The rewards of being a caregiver (and there are many) are to live a long and healthy life with those you've cared for over the years. But, years of self-neglect can compromise your health.

How can we work around this dilemma? The answer is in realizing that to give the best care we first must care for and nurture ourselves.

Caution: Women at Work

Redford Williams PhD, a Duke stress physiologist, has published numerous studies demonstrating that most women in the workplace perceive and react to stress differently than men. Under the typical pressures of a workday, a woman will be less likely to face off in a confrontation with a fellow worker, and will often personalize the experience, seeing fault first in herself, and finding difficulty in objectively assessing the situation. Williams found that women will frequently try to avoid conflict, internalizing the tension and stress, and then will go home with increasing feelings of anxiety, frustration and helplessness. This will often manifest itself in self-destructive behavior, such as overeating, smoking and social withdrawal. Of special note is his studies of heart disease in those women who typically internalize their feelings of stress. Williams and his colleagues found that over time, these women were more likely to develop high blood pressure, develop plaque in their coronary arteries, and eventually succumb to heart disease.

Take Control

How can working women manage a career and care for their families while avoiding self-destruction?

First, it's important to realize that most stress-related harm results from our perceptions of and response to stress. You control that response. You are very powerful here. That power is your ability to take a breath and see your daily stressors differently. The goal is to avoid feeling:

• defeated
• helpless
• hopeless
• out of control

If you can avoid these feelings, then you can control your cortisol levels and stay healthy. Cortisol is a hormone that your body releases in reaction to stress.

The goal is to develop a stress resilient attitude. You need to learn to cope, adjust, and adapt in a way that keeps cortisol under control and self destruction at bay. Resilience means bouncing along with what life throws your way, being flexible, and creative in how you cope each day.

Here are some tips to help you on the road to stress resilience:

• Find "pockets of peace" where you have made time for yourself to renew and rest. Just five minutes scattered throughout the day can help.

• Add yourself to your daily TO DO list. Your self-care needs to be carefully planned each day. Write it down in ink so that you don't become so distracted by your caregiving activities that you once again forget you exist!

• Use physical activity throughout the day to de-stress. Get up from your sedentary job or house work and move for five minutes. Moving your body with vigor, even for a few minutes, is healing mentally and physically. The brain's de-stressing chemical, beta-endorphin, will be secreted with the movement to help you calm down and feel mentally prepared to cope with stress.

• Aim for a less stressful job situation, either by distressing the job you have wherever possible or by finding a new job. A 1998 study by researchers at the University of Guelph on Ontario, Canada, found that a work environment that allowed or encouraged telecommuting, flexible hours, or reduced hours increased women's perception of control over their time and reduced their perceived job overload.

Finally, learn that it's alright to ask for help and support throughout the day, whether from coworkers or family members. Delegating the workload of your professional work, your "home" work and your caregiving responsibilities can relieve the often overwhelming burden of trying to do it all. It can also save you!

Pamela M. Peeke MD, MPH, Pew Foundation Scholar in Nutrition and Metabolism, is Medical Advisor to the NWHRC; she also is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and author of the best selling book Fight Fat After Forty (Viking Press, 2000).

Click www.drpeeke.com, Dr. Peeke's Web site featuring health and wellness issues for women.