On February 4th we observe world cancer day and as someone that has been personally impacted
by this disease, I want to share with you the latest evidence that shows the strong
link between psychological stress and cancer.
If you're new to the channel, welcome, I'm Lennis.
I work as a wellness engineer helping women let go of the stress and chaos so they can
have more fulfillment, joy and happiness in their lives. If you like the content that I share here,
make sure to subscribe to the channel and hit the bell so you get notified when I publish new
videos every week.
This topic is very near to my heart.
Just last year, I lost a really great friend to this disease. I've lost coworkers to cancer.
And I myself have had a cancer scare. Last year I started to work on a personal research project
where I talked to women in STEM about their stress levels.
Almost 80% of them shared that their stress levels were above average with 11%
telling me that they were experiencing chronic stress levels above the range that I was asking
them to explain. This is why I want to share with you the latest evidence and research that show how
psychological stress is linked to cancer. You can find the full article that I'm
going to share with you in the description of this video.
In a recent article published at the Translational Medicine at UniSa, which is the official journal
of the medical school of the University of Salerno you find that: Psychological stress and cancer
There's new evidence of an increasingly strong link.
The authors go to discuss some ideas on cancer prevention, psychological stress,
and inflammation. And what I want you to go, if you have time, you can go
through all the details of the research. But when you go down to the concluding remarks,
this is what I want to emphasize the information that they share.
It is well known as a distress psychological and physiological state that occurs in individuals in
the form of fear , anxiety, pain and depression, easily manifestable with the stressful urban
dweller's life, can lead to a condition of chronic stress bearing adverse effects on cardiovascular
and nervous systems and exacerbating autoimmune diseases and like we show in the present work,
there are increasing scientific evidence that underline how chronic psychological stress plays a
role in cancer initiation, progression and cancer metastasis and a negative role for anti tumor
immune function and therapy response. So, pretty much as you read here,
they one of the things that they say is that: The only valid solution to get out of a condition
of chronic stress is to change as far as possible once lifestyle. How? First and foremost, to cope
with stress it is important being aware of one's sources and causes of stress and only in this way
it is possible to find a solution. In light of these new findings, in the
near future it will be of crucial importance conduct information campaigns to disseminate
the latest scientific evidence in order to prevent and minimize the number and the impact on health
of common daily stressors and at the same time comply with the medical approach more focused on
preserving the patient s psychological well-being in order to make therapies more effective.
I want to be transparent with you and share the why of my work and this video.
In 2014 I was sitting in the parking lot of the job that I had at the time and I received
a message from my doctor's office. The biopsy that I had recently gotten done
didn't show good news or positive results. They had discovered that I had pre-cancerous cells
that were the type that were proven to become a highly aggressive cancer
if left untreated. I needed to get treatment and surgery immediately. As you can imagine,
I went into denial. I kept thinking this cannot be happening.
Why, how can this be happening to me? I'm a healthy person, living
a quote unquote perfect life. This really cannot be happening. I got the treatment required. I got
the surgery and got the okay from the doctor that things were looking positive now.
But as you can imagine, the impact of those news and the recovery process
led me to spend a period of time doing some deep inner evaluation. What had caused my cancer?
What was going on in my life that caused me to go through this experience?
Of course, as an engineer I wanted to figure out what was going on and what I realized
looking back is that this was the product of a series of events that I had started in 2012.
As I was preparing and training for to run the Philadelphia Marathon in 2012.
I remember in one training sessions I had a panic attack. I didn't know what was happening
to me in that moment, but now I can say with certainty, that's exactly what happened.
I had a panic attack. It was quick and I felt better. A few weeks later, we were in the process,
my husband at the time and I, of selling our home and purchasing a new home in one of the
top neighborhoods in New Jersey. I remember going to the therapist's office and telling
her how I did not wanted to go through the same process we had gone through years prior
on rebuilding a house because the house was old and needed a lot of renovations.
I tried negotiating with my husband at the time and ultimately gave up. We sold the house,
purchased this new home and gutted the house. I remember waking up at three o'clock in
the morning on an air mattress in our new home, the day of the marathon.
The house was destroyed inside because we were doing the renovations ourselves.
I went to Philly, ran the marathon, had a great time, a good experience, and then came back and
the next day, it was time to set some tiles to pay some walls and to do some more work, something
that I personally didn't enjoy doing, but felt that I had to, I was already in this mess.
Then a few weeks passed by and my parents came to visit from Venezuela.
They were supposed to spend the holidays with us, Christmas and New Year's, until a few days
into their visit my Dad had a fever and had some symptoms. He wasn't getting out of bed,
his fever lasted for about three days and wasn't going down with over the counter medication.
My brother was visiting for the weekend, so we took him to the doctor.
My brother called and said the doctors had found that my Dad had an aneurysm
but he had an infection that was pressing against the aneurysm in his aorta and the back of his
spine and this infection was what s causing the fever. They took him to a bigger hospital
and I can just tell you the next 45 days
were hell, not only was I working full time and living in a completely gutted house.
Now my Dad was in the hospital. My mom was a nervous wreck and I was going every day to
the hospital between work, in the morning after work, during lunch breaks, because
they don't speak English and I needed to be there for to translate to be able to help them.
Thankfully, my job was allowing me to work a few hours from the hospital
and they were pretty flexible and encouraging and supportive, but I still had to work, and
go home and spackle and paint some walls and do all of these different things. Finally,
after 45 days, lots of different rounds of antibiotics, the doctors
figured out a treatment for my dad that was helping reduce the infection that he had.
So, he went home a few weeks later after the infection was completely clear.
He went into surgery to get a stent for his aorta, for his aneurysm. And then came home
for his recovery, follow-up appointments etc. It wasn't until May 2013 that my dad and my
mom were able to return to Venezuela. We were able to finish our home and
life pretty much went back to normal. I felt so proud to be able to push through that experience.
For the way that I was able to handle all the stress and pressure. For being able to get my dad
the help that he needed to get him back to health and to be able to work, be efficient,
finish the house and do all of that. I felt truly proud.
Now, life was looking pretty good. We got a new car, we were inviting friends to come to our home
and enjoyed this new house and new phase in our lives until that phone call in 2014.
After a successful surgery and follow-ups, as I was doing that deep inner evaluation I realized
that for pretty much my entire adult life I wasn't living authentically. My life was just a facade.
Perfect on the outside, I was dealing with stress that I didn't know how to cope with,
realizing what was going on, realizing how lost how lost and broken I felt even though I was
getting praised for being such an amazing daughter, I was getting praise for being
such a great engineer for having this wonderful relationship and new home and being successful
at just 32 33 years old. I felt so broken. So lost. I realized that the life that I was living
had led to that cancer experience because I didn't know how to cope
with the stressors of my daily life. I didn't know how to cope with the toxic
relationship and marriage that I had. I walked away and got divorced and
had to be very courageous because I knew the shame that I was bringing
I knew the shame that I was bringing to my family. Marriage is supposed to last forever.
It doesn't matter how unhappy you are. I remember it took my dad
two years to tell his family that I was divorced. It was something you don't talk about.
So feeling that shame was hard but feeling broken was worst.
I share this because I know as women, we tend to accept the stressors of life
as a fact, as the things to be as they are, we tend to stay in relationships, work relationships,
personal relationships, that are toxic for us for way too long. And our bodies
are feeling the impact of that because somehow we feel that we don't deserve to have a better
life or we think that's just how life is. But honestly, life is supposed to be about joy,
happiness, inner peace. I was finally able to connect with my deeper deep inside
with that Lennis that came into this world that was perfect, that was whole, that is healthy and
thriving and life can be simple. We just tend to complicate it but it really can be simple.
It is so important for women to learn these tools, to manage stress, to learn
how to let let go of the outer expectations, to live authentically, to be themselves,
to really feel worthy and deserving. I not only got help from a therapist,
but I built a team to help me through this journey of finding myself finding that peace and creating
the life that I knew deep inside I deserved. So what I'm asking you is to, please not go for
it alone. Don't do it alone. The journey alone it's gonna take you longer, it's gonna be harder.
Ask for help, build your team. I'm not saying talk to me, I'm saying, talk to someone,
find a therapist, find a coach, find a mentor. If it wasn't for that team that I built,
I would not be here talking to you telling you all these things Not only was my mental health
really struggling, my physical health now started to show some symptoms back in 2014, of course. And
we're going through unprecedented times with the global situation with the fear and anxiety of:
if I go out am I going to get sick and I'm going to be part of this statistics from the pandemic.
How am I going to handle getting into meetings, going into work, working from home when my kids
are also at home taking online classes because they cannot go to school.
What is going to be the financial situation in my family in the next few months? All of these fears,
all of these anxieties consume our brains, our minds and our bodies every single day.
And we lack the tools to manage stress and I can tell you, these tools are simple, they don't take
forever, you don't have to spend hours practicing these tools, it takes awareness.
And that inner sense of worthiness that yes you can, you deserve a better life, you deserve to
live better. You deserve to know how to manage your stress, how to prevent it. How to let go of
all those toxic things in your life. You deserve it. And my why is I don't want another woman to
go through the same thing I went through. I don't want another person to struggle because
they are afraid to ask for help, because they feel ashamed of walking away from that unhappy
marriage or relationship or job, because of the what would they say? Especially in my culture.
Your life can be amazing, there's nothing like that feeling that I have now, every day waking up
filled with joy with gratitude being so thankful for the courage that my old self had.
So I'll leave some resources in the description of this video. Thank you for watching and coming
along, I truly truly appreciate you. I feel so blessed that you're here
and feel free to reach out. I'm here to help in any way that I can. Lots of love. Bye