Stress Can Break You

Stress can break You - Blog

Let me show you two things and ask you if you see a similarity.

The first thing is my torchiere lamp. I came into my living room one
morning in early December and found that it had collapsed during the
night, which explained a loud cracking noise I'd heard and attributed to

the cold affecting
parts of my house.
(Coming from
Wisconsin, I'm
familiar with the
expansion and
contraction caused
by changes in
weather.)

In this picture you
can see that the
metal has cracked
and the central
column has lifted
away.

My experience as a
silversmith in
London tells me
that the cracking

results from fatigue along stress lines created in the metal during
manufacture. As long as the lamp was at a fairly even and warm
temperature there was no movement in the metal and it remained intact.

But when it got very cold in my living room over several hours, the metal
fractured at the points where one piece of metal moved differently in
response to the cold than an adjacent and attached piece of metal. I'm not
sure whether it was the interior plate of metal or the external hollow
column which adjusted most to the change in temperature, but it's fairly
clear that both parts did not adjust in unison.

I am showing you this because it is an excellent illustration of what
happens in our bodies when there are stresses on us that call for changes
and in fact force changes onto us.

Say, for instance, that something shocking happens, not just the shock of
an accident when you might actually be diagnosed as suffering from
shock, but something like being fired in a downsizing that you feared
because you need the money from your job, or the person you are
married to or in love with (or both) tells you they are having second
thoughts, and a chill races through your body leaving you shivering. Or, it
could be that for months or years you have been making yourself do
something that you feel a duty to do, but that is wearing you out and then
you are hit with a shock -- in these cases your body is going to experience
some abrupt, unrelenting changes, to your temperature: you may start
shivering, to your muscle tension: you may become stiff with anxiety,
your heart may begin to race, etc.

Okay, this is the critical moment. Because if you have someone to give
you warm tea and words of comfort, or genuine hugs, then everything
may become synchronized as you recover and no major damage is done.

But say you have been pushing yourself to your limits and you don't have
any resilience left, nor anyone to hug and encourage you, then you may,
for the sake of examples, throw your back out, or get sciatica, or any
number of pain related health issues.

Or, say you have some toxins you've been dealing with from medications,
from your environment, or from "toxic" people you are forced to deal
with. In those cases you may already have stress fractures, as it were.
They may be imperceptible to your doctor, if you've gone in to ask about
symptoms, but they are nonetheless real and given a shocking situation
they can become undeniable, at least to you because of the pain. Your
doctor may continue to deny that anything physical is wrong.

In terms of toxins, when I saw my avocado's
leaves crinkle I saw a similarity to the deep
unevenness in my fingernails while I lived in the
hydrogen sulfide. My thumbnails had particularly
noticeable "gullies" in them.

My avocado did not have crinkled leaves before
I transplanted it into the large cadmium red
glazed pot that I thought would be good for its
roots, giving them lots of room.

My avocado's leaves began to look crinkled like
this after it had been in the cadmium red pot for
a few months. (Cadmium is a known toxin, but I
hadn't thought about that when I bought the
pots, which were nice looking and not costly.)

Were it not for the fact that two other plants,
one of ten years standing, also became sick in
two other cadmium red pots, I wouldn't think
there was any connection to the pot.

Okay, so here is my question to you: Do you see a similarity between the
metal not being able to stand up to the stress of the severe temperature
change and the leaves not being able to stand up to the stress of the toxins?

If you do, as I do, then you will be able to better understand how your
body is not invincible when it comes to different stresses which it may be
subjected to.

Two hopeful things are 1.) that possibly compost may allow plants to
grow normally in toxic pots -- I'm experimenting now... but so far there
are no result; and 2.) the hopeful thing for our bodies is that it appears
that vitamin B12 (in the Methylcobalamin form) is able to help our bodies
adjust without breaking, as it were.

Possibly this is because B12 keeps our nerves healthy, and nerves are
what transfer sensations and messages of change to different parts of our
bodies. For instance, when my feet began to lack sensation due to
peripheral neuropathy caused by low vitamin B12, I could no longer tell
when my feet were cold from being out from under the covers, nor could
I tell if someone tickled them. Now, after a lot of B12 replacement, the
nerves in my feet are beginning to more reliably send messages.

If you see what I am saying, and if you are dealing with stress, then take
the precaution of getting and using Methylcobalamin lozenges.

As always, I end by saying, "I wish I'd known this earlier, and I wish I
had taken Methylcobalamin before my nerves were so severely damaged
that it impacted my life in ways I would not have imagined, as for
instance, tetanus."