HUFFINGTON
02.23.14
THRIVE
West and in emerging economies,
there are more people every day
who recognize that these are all
dead ends—that they are chasing a
broken dream. That we cannot find
the answer in our current definition of success alone because—as
Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland—“There is no there there.”
More and more scientific studies
and more and more health statistics are showing that the way we’ve
been leading our lives—what we
prioritize and what we value—is
not working. And growing numbers
of women—and men—are refusing to join the list of casualties.
Instead, they are reevaluating their
lives, looking to thrive rather than
merely succeed based on how the
world measures success.
The latest science proves that
increased stress and burnout have
huge consequences for both our
personal health and our health
care system. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon found that from 1983
to 2009, there was between a 10
and 30 percent increase in stress
levels across all demographic categories. Higher levels of stress can
lead to higher instances of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fully
three-quarters of American health
care spending goes toward treating
such chronic conditions. The Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body
Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital estimates that 60 to 90
percent of doctor visits are to treat
stress-related conditions. While
in the United Kingdom, stress has
emerged in recent years as the top
cause of illness across the nation.
As Tim Straughan, the chief executive of the Health and Social Care
Information Centre explained, “It
might be assumed that stress and
anxiety are conditions that result
in a journey to a general practitioner’s consulting room rather than
a hospital ward. However, our figures suggest thousands of cases a
year arise where patients suffering
from stress or anxiety become hospitalised in England.”
The stress we experience impacts our children, too. Indeed, the
effects of stress on children—even
in utero—were emphasized in the
journal of the American Academy
of Pediatrics. As Nicholas Kristof
put it in The New York Times:
“Cues of a hostile or indifferent environment flood an infant, or even
a fetus, with stress hormones like
cortisol in ways that can disrupt
the body’s metabolism or the architecture of the brain. The upshot
is that children are sometimes permanently undermined. Even many