If you want to decompress, reduce your stress and live a healthier life, here is the doctor’s prescription: go for a run, download your favorite piece of music to your ipod or repeat a single word or phrase. Fail to do so at your own risk!

So counsels Dr. Carol Scott, an emergency room doctor who works at a US Army hospital in Virginia. Speaking about her new book, Optimal Stress, at the Army and Navy Club in downtown Washington Wednesday morning, Scott, who was trained at Duke and Johns Hopkins and is a national stress reduction expert, told her audience that the stressors in American lives boil down to finances, family, relationships, job stability and health. Regardless of the source of the stress, the key ingredients to how someone handles stress are background and perception. Background counts heavily. If you’ve been exposed to trauma as a child, for example, you will handle stress differently than someone who had an easy childhood. Perception is most important. It’s how you look at the situation. Making lemonade out of lemons comes to mind. To illustrate, she showed a video clip of a soldier facing deployment to Afghanistan talking about how much stress he is already under at a US Army base just living a military life, working 12 hour shifts, raising a new baby, yet he enthusiastically looks forward to his deployment realizing he will be facing the ultimate stressful situation. “But I know that what I’ll be doing every day is changing lives.” Another positive-thinking soldier who had experienced a tour of duty in Iraq said the worst he had to do was to fly over the battlefield carrying patients. Dangerous and stressful, but he did not look at it that way. He was satisfied knowing he was taking care of those who needed him. “Purpose, prioritites and passions form your perceptions,” said Dr. Scott. “Purpose drives you and keeps you in the game. You do something because you’re committed to it.”

Acute stress, such as that experienced during a frightening moment is healthy, she said, in that it promotes attention and memory and allows for quick thinking on the spot. But in the long run stress, if not moderated and controlled, causes serious health problems: abdominal fat, heart disease, diabetes, hardening of the arteries, osteoporosis. The risk factor associated with stress is equal to the risk of smoking.


Know your stress signals, she said, whether it’s sweating, eating too much or flying off the handle. When your recognize a stress signal, head it off at the pass by changing your mindset. How you leverage stress is critical. Express only positive emotions. Smile. Show gratitude. Express feelings of love. Give positive feedback to your employees, ie, “You really did a good job on that.” Change your playlist. Instead of thinking to yourself “noone likes me,” take a power pause for even five minutes and listen to your favorite artist or your favorite song. Or pick a phrase or word such as “love,” “peace,” “harmony,” "Divine Order," and repeat the word or phrase over and over again in order to quiet the mind and cleanse it of negative thoughts. It helps if the word or phrase is linked to a belief system. True relaxation is not watching television or a movie, which are passive pastimes, she said. Go for a run. Running, she said is like the repetition of a word or phrase. The repetition of footsteps in the rhythm of running allows the mind to quiet and provides clarity. The main thing is to get rid of stress before it gets rid of you.