Stress is ubiquitous. Health-damaging reactions to stress are epidemic on a global scale. Many factors contribute to stress, and the reactions to stress—particularly chronic stress—increase susceptibility to stress and damage our resiliency to stress. The physiological, immunological and neurological reactions to stress are implicated in all major health problems. Aside from health problems per se, the effects of stress are damaging to functioning in all areas of life.

The psychology, physiology and neurophysiology of stress are revealing the extreme degree to which stress is a major causal factor in a wide variety of illnesses, disorders, and breakdowns. When these problems develop, the problems themselves begin to increase further susceptibility to stress as well as amplify the impact of stress. This creates positive feedback loops that exacerbate the breakdown of resilience to stress as well as to decrease the individual’s ability to deal with stress at all levels. The negative effects of stress radiate to every dimension of one’s life.

Stress is not only a problem for individuals, but it is clear that stress is rampant in groups, institutions, governments, and cultures world-wide. These in turn feed back to the individual level, amplifying the destructive effects of stress, in an ever-amplifying loop.

The lack of attention to this crisis mirrors the lack of attention and inaction in relation to the global environmental crisis.

“Storyteller, mythmaker, and destroyer of the living world.”

So begins Edward O. Wilson’s Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. The renowned biologist, in his most fervent work, proposes giving back half the planet’s surface to nature. Only in this way can life, aside from microbes, jellyfish and fungi, be saved from mankind’s failure to serve as loving steward of the earth.

How likely is that? Given the current state of things, it is highly unlikely, and for this reason, we are all marching toward the abyss, as if drugged.

But the microcosm of this larger macrocosm, lies in how each of us deals with the increasing stress arising from all fronts. Perhaps healing ourselves individually is the only path to changing the larger and ever more certain calamities facing us.

The latest research on stress reduction and on increasing stress resiliency, focuses on four issues: the quality of sleep and dreaming, the quality of diet, the quality of exercise and the quality of expression. I emphasize the importance of quality here to make clear this issue is not superficial, surface-level, or trivial. The changes necessary to achieve quality in these areas go deep, require effort, and discipline; anything short of this is an inevitable, if slow, suicide.

Sleep. Quality of sleep requires seven to eight hours of sleep. Only in this way can one obtain the full complement of deep sleep and REM-sleep patterns. Several deep sleep cycles are necessary for the full restorative effects of sleep on all body systems. Without this, all body systems become weakened and become susceptible to damage from internal and external sources. Dreams cycles are required for fully preparing the brain for dealing with problems and enhancing creativity when one awakes. Brain health, including resistance to dementia processes, requires quality sleep and dreaming. Brain health is vital to the health and vigor of the immune system, limiting the damaging effects of cortisol (the “stress hormone”), and increasing the resistance to chronic infection.

Stress plays a large part in developing a large number of sleep disorders. One of the typical behavioral ways of dealing with stress is to reduce the amount one sleeps. This not only increases stress, but sets the stage for damaging sleep disorders that further degrade the quality of sleep. Sleep disorders are epidemic and underlie many health issues and contribute to the enormous costs of the consequent health problems.

Sleep and dreams are now known to be essential to health. Developing a healthy relation to stress begins in getting enough sleep. Go to sleep around the same time every night (ritual helps induce quality sleep). Do not drink or take drugs at least three hours before sleep (alcohol and drugs disrupt deep sleep and REM-sleep; best to sleep in a slightly dehydrated state). Sleep in a cool (65 degrees) environment. Make sure your sleeping room is dark. No lights. No computers or phones. No TV (all these things interferes with sleep patterns). Spend the last hour of the evening before sleep shutting off external input and focusing on connecting with yourself (this inward turn facilitates deeper sleep and dreaming). Make sleep an absolute priority.

Diet. About 80-90% of the typical modern-day, stress-infused, lifestyle diet is damaging to health. Among the culprits are alcohol, drugs, and medications. Using alcohol and drugs in response to stress, not only increases stress, but also increases the incapacity to deal with stress effectively as well as contributing directly to a large range of health consequences. In addition, while medications are increasingly prescribed for physical and mental health problems, the side-effects of medications account for about two-thirds of unintended complications that increase the effects of stress and reduce one’s capacity to deal with stress. In addition, processed foods are directly related to increasing stress because of both genetically altered real foods, and the added chemicals are aggregated in such a way as to increase desire for such un-natural food. A healthy diet is essential to mitigating the impacts of stress (as well as enhancing the capacity to sleep well). The simplest “cure,” is to eliminate processed foods, eat real food, eliminate wheat, refined sugars, refined salts, and drink 64 ounces of water a day. Coffee is OK if you stop drinking it at noon. Otherwise, it will disrupt sleep patterns severely.

Exercise. It is clear now that the human body is meant to move in order to achieve optimal functioning at all levels. Just how important this is goes well beyond “heart health.” It is brain health, immune health, cognitive health, sexual health, and everything else health. That’s how important it is—no matter how old one is, or how disabled. It is also clear now that there are certain “minimums” of movement to keep catabolic (“breakdown”) processes at bay. Exercise is crucial for dealing with stress and all its destructive effects. But it’s not just exercise per se. Using all muscles in a variety of ways is as important as what we typically think of as exercise. For example, writing by hand in composing a letter, lights up the brain in ways that tapping on a keyboard does not. Painting with a brush on a canvas has the same effect in comparison to using a stylus on the computer screen. Getting your whole body into moving underlies the importance of expression (see below). It is now clear that more frequent and shorter periods of exercise (whether walking or running or stretching) are more beneficial than longer periods of strenuous effort. It’s also clear that ritualizing exercise and movement enhances the effect on stress reduction. The everydayness is important. A quick way to determine if you are getting a minimum of exercise is to use a pedometer and set it accurately and try for 10,000 steps a day. But keep in mind the idea of moving all your muscles. After typing on your keyboard, take a time out, and flex your fingers while you move your hands and arms through the air. And watch yourself doing this; then do it with your eyes closed. The brain lights up differently in these two conditions and so this helps your brain to incite neurogenesis (growth of new brain cells). Create a standup computer work station so you can move while working—turning yourself round and round until you get dizzy is a great exercise.

Expression. Expression is the newcomer to the basics of health. Expression means “from inside out.” This is counterpoised to the ubiquity of “from outside in” (think TV, internet, social media, cell phones, about 99% of our daily experience). Expression takes many forms, but the basic idea is expressing in movement, singing, making music, making art, writing something original, and many other ways as well. Along with this, studies are showing that entering into imagination triggers the brain in productive ways that form the basis of new experience as well as enhancing neurogenesis. Expression in various ways every day will help develop an immunity to stress and this will in turn enhance stress resilience.

For most of us, what we encounter in our everyday lives conspires to increase stress and degrade our resilience to stress. In many ways, we are complicit in this through denial, short-term thinking, and putting our own welfare on the back burner. We are doing ourselves in. How we treat our own body, our own “earth,” is very similar to how, as humans, we have treated the earth itself. And the reasons for not doing something about it are the same. As I said above, not doing something about this can no longer be considered a viable option. It is slow suicide.