Stress is an enemy in the fight against inflammation

As we have regularly mentioned, one of our key strategies is to avoid inflammation. Anything that causes inflammation is to be avoided and anything that boosts our bodies to fight it is something we want to do.

I came across an interesting article about stress and its affect on inflammation – rather the reduced ability to fight it if stressed.

“The immune system’s ability to regulate inflammation predicts who will develop a cold, but more importantly it provides an explanation of how stress can promote disease,” Cohen says.

“When under stress, cells of the immune system are unable to respond to hormonal control, and consequently, produce levels of inflammation that promote disease. Because inflammation plays a role in many diseases such as cardiovascular, asthma and autoimmune disorders, this model suggests why stress impacts them as well.”

In short, my approach to reduce stress are emotional, spiritual and physical. I do believe it is these small things that – if followed rigorously – will give us the small edge.

How do you cope with it?

Knowledge

Knowledge of brain cancer (and having it) is challenging to put it mildly. People with serious illnesses say how it changed them for the better. New found appreciation for life, living to ones full potential, made them happy. To continue, it woke them up as before they were ‘sleeping’ and letting life slowly tick away. In this particular sense, it makes sense to be happy about an illness; the ability to step outside ones own ‘zone’, to see oneself from the outside; and as one looks oneself, it is possible to see where one is and what one should do differently, since everything is in perspective. Perhaps at least then one can see what a small part of the universe one is – albeit an important part. A sense of togetherness with everyone and everything with the realization of time on earth being relative, destruction of harmful parts of ego, etc.

I could go on and on.

I struggle with the emotional and spiritual dimensions of this journey. I find all the other parts quite tolerable, some of them I even enjoy, such as better nutrition and exercise. Excluding my emotional and spiritual well-being, I would say that other parts of my life have enhanced significantly since I found out about my brain cancer.

I do not think I am special in any way or that I should live longer than others. There are quite a lot of people suffering around the world with horrible diseases – disease worse than mine (or ours) – and young children being killed and brutalized by gangs of thugs in war zones and so forth. I am fortunate compared to so many innocent ones who never even had a chance but to suffer and suffer more.

Yet even while realizing all this, adding the fact that I do not feel sorry for myself per se, why, then, can’t I truly align myself with togetherness with the universe and about finding light in darkness? Why am I not coping with the situation enough to be able to rise above it? I can understand and agree with the rational part of it all, but I do not feel it.

Coping or not coping?

I have distanced myself from myself. It is an effective method in order to avoid emotional distress and act rationally and effectively. The problem is not acting rationally. The problem is getting back into the whole feeling part. I might be protecting myself from a total emotional crash. I never really crashed anyway. Is it normal?

As a father of two babies and the only one pulling any kind of salary, I must act rationally and cannot afford to rip myself apart in purpose of building myself back up again. How do I become anew while taking distance, is it even possible?

I do not feel sorry for my approaching demise if that should be the case. But I feel it is my responsibility and purpose in life to be here as long as I can for my children. They will be the ones hurt, not me. And that in itself – and I emphasize this strongly – is the real suffering I carry inside.

Difficult facts of life and having to face them too early in their lives is my concern. I have to stay alive, it is my only option. None of this will help me with the issues I have about distancing myself from everything and thus not being able to reach the happy part of realizations about life and death. As long as it all remains rational, it isn’t very useful. Rational is good and fine, but it just is.

Everything being relative

I don’t like the approach of everything being subjective, relative and so forth. Things certainly are not black and white – either things being or not being – at least not in my line of thinking. But I do think brain cancer is one of the most difficult issues to cope with: we have very little chance of survival, and yet some of us will get some amount of years to live.

I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve had few years to live after I was first diagnosed. I’m still alive. I’m more alive than a lot of other people I see while using public transportation. On the outside, I’m more healthy than a lot of people and getting stronger every day. But on the inside, a clock is ticking. I’m running out of time, is what my thoughts are.

The difference is, I guess, that I should be happy about the time that remains.

I’m really trying, but at least of yet, it’s not happening. The remaining time carries an extra punishment, the opportunity to have time to think about the pain and suffering. Would these be the thoughts of a pessimistic person? I don’t consider myself as one, but times are extraordinary. This part is really difficult for me to convey to you. Should I not consider myself luckier than those who died within few months or even faster?

Perhaps some things are relative after all. I do not wish this to be offensive, these have been my sincere thoughts and feelings. I should note that immediately after the shock that followed the diagnosis, I felt genuinely happy and even a bit enlightened. I felt so many positive things. Slowly but surely, they all vanished.

Solution

Even for rational thinkers, or those striving to be rational, there is an answer that we can find comforting: we have a chance.

No, we are not going to just die away, accepting death as part of life and hoping that as a result we would become happy. No, we have to be in charge. We realize there are things we cannot control, in fact most of them are uncontrollable, but we will not let that slow us down.

We believe, that despite all the previous, we need to be positive. It is a factor in our likeliness for survival. We will eat well, no, we will eat perfectly. We will exercise our asses off. We will gain perfect ratio of body fat, visceral fat, cholesterol, we will eliminate most opportunities for our bodies to have inflammation. We will overcome the paradox of trying to not try, so we can let go and reach higher states of relaxation.

We realize we can aim for the longer tail in the statistical world of facts. We will read everything we can on the subject, off the subject, close to the subject. We will share all the information we have and build up a community of like-minded people. We are all in the same boat. Together, we can accumulate more than on an individual basis. Together we can – and I do believe this to be true – have a better shot at survival. This I believe to be the solution.

I have not yet reached the vision of how it is achieved, but I know it is possible. So far, my own personal efforts have been fairly ad hoc, but I am systematizing and becoming more and more active. Let’s establish some facts:

Fact 1.
Cancer, including brain cancer, is an issue that will be solved in the near future in terms of controlling tumor growth. In the near future, we will see better detection (early detection especially) for brain tumors. We will also see better conventional techniques of treatment, including drugs, radiation and chemotherapy.

Fact 2.
As a result, we will have longer expected time to live.

Fact 3.
In the future, we will have developed a solution for brain cancer so it will become just another disease among others – non lethal.

Fact 4.
As a result, we need to do everything in our power to live long enough to have better techniques for prolonging our lives, so that inevitably the solution will be available at the end. We do not need to be able to survive, say, 20 years if that should be the time for the ‘cure for cancer’. In this example, we need to survive 5 years so we get those better drugs, radiation and chemo.

Fact 5.
Even with lack of real breakthroughs, non-conventional methods are always available. Be it real causality of or placebo, who knows we might be doing the right thing already. We can eat better, exercise, avoid bad things, reduce the opportunities for inflammation in our bodies and so forth.

These are the facts that I am sure of. The rest is still to be realized.

It’s never too late…

I remember clearly when my life changed. I woke up from my first seizure, lying on the floor, in total calmness saying “I’m OK”, while my girlfriend was freaking out and saying “don’t try to get up!” and talking to the emergency staff over the phone about my seizure.

I got up to the couch, I just felt a bit tired. Ambulance was on its way and I had a seizure, how could that be? Then I woke up again and the paramedics were next to me, looking deep into my eyes. They said that I’ve had seizures and that I’d be going to the hospital.

I wasn’t particularly scared. I was mostly calm. Apparently I had two major seizures, lasting for about 5 minutes a piece. They hooked me up with all kinds of sensors and I had to go to the intensive care unit. Now I started to be a bit afraid, as old people were dying in the same room, shouting, they were scared and delirious. Probably because they were heavily medicated. I was thinking if this is what dying sounds like… alone, hallucinating, wired up, and no one to talk to or saying it’ll be OK.

Once I got out, I never felt scared. It was only later on when I found out I had brain cancer. But one thing that stuck with me is that it’s never too late. If you are not in the ICU, it’s not too late. It’s not too late to say “I love you”, it’s not too late to make your life into what you want it to be.

Soon after I had my first child. I’m glad my girlfriend was pregnant before I had my seizures, who knows if I’d been able to make a decision to have a child after that. But now, seeing my wonderful daughter every morning and tucking her to sleep at night, I only know that it was all worth it. I’m lucky that my cancer is fairly passive and grows slow. If it was more aggressive, my daughter would most likely have never been born. (And no, it is not something she is likely to inherit).

For quite a long time I felt de-sensitized, taking distance to everything so I would survive. My daily grind was difficult for a long time. Now? I can fall in love again, every morning, every evening. I have my bad days, but I can enjoy a sunny day, I can think of myself as a fortunate man.

It’s never too late. I changed my career as well and got a new job. It’s a demanding job and quite a lot of trust is put upon me, and of course I have kept my brain cancer to myself, but what I want to share here with you is that even though one day you might be scared and wired up like Neo in the movie Matrix, you might have weeks or even months of darkness inside, being jealous of the life force of old people as if the world owes you more time… things can change for the better. It doesn’t always happen, but sometimes it happens. Why not me?

So for the last weeks I’ve been very busy with my new job and I’ve got a long backlog of interesting related articles I want to share with all of you. I’ll be going through them soon. But what ever it is, a new career, hobbies, or even family… it’s never too late.