What Grief Does To Your Body (And How To Manage It)

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What Grief Does To The Body (And How To Manage It)

In life, we will almost all lose loved ones and suffer bereavement. For most people, this starts with grandparents, eventually moves to parents, and then people our own generation; partners, siblings, close friends. And of course, sometimes and perhaps most devastatingly, we can lose people younger than ourselves.

For something that almost everyone suffers, there is often very little in the way of preparation given beforehand, and afterwards, a condolences card is nice but can’t do a lot for our mental health.

And with mental health, our physical health can go too, if we very understandably neglect it at such a time.

So, how to survive devastating loss, and come out the other side, hopefully thriving? It seems like a tall order indeed.

First, the foundations:

You’re probably familiar with the stages of grief. In their most commonly-presented form, they are:

  1. Denial
  2. Anger
  3. Bargaining
  4. Depression
  5. Acceptance

You’ve probably also heard/read that we won’t always go through them in order, and also that grief is deeply personal and proceeds on its own timescale.

It is generally considered healthy to go through them.

What do they look like?

Naturally this can vary a lot from person to person, but examples in the case of bereavement could be:

  1. Denial: “This surely has not really happened; I’ll carry on as though it hasn’t”
  2. Anger: “Why didn’t I do xyz differently while I had the chance?!”
  3. Bargaining: “I will do such-and-such in their honor, and this will be a way of expressing the love I wish I could give them in a way they could receive”
  4. Depression: “What is the point of me without them? The sooner I join them, the better.”
  5. Acceptance: “I was so lucky that we had the time together that we did, and enriched each other’s lives while we could”

We can speedrun these or we can get stuck on one for years. We can bounce back and forth. We can think we’re at acceptance, and then a previous stage will hit us like a tonne of bricks.

What if we don’t?

Assuming that our lost loved one was indeed a loved one (as opposed to someone we are merely societally expected to mourn), then failing to process that grief will tend to have a big impact on our life—and health. These health problems can include:

As you can see, three out of five of those can result in death. The other two aren’t great either. So why isn’t this taken more seriously as a matter of health?

Death is, ironically, considered something we “just have to live with”.

But how?

Coping strategies

You’ll note that most of the stages of grief are not enjoyable per se. For this reason, it’s common to try to avoid them—hence denial usually being first.

But, that is like not getting a lump checked out because you don’t want a cancer diagnosis. The emotional reasoning is understandable, but it’s ultimately self-destructive.

First, have a plan. If a death is foreseen, you can even work out this plan together.

But even if that time has now passed, it’s “better late than never” to make a plan for looking after yourself, e.g:

  • How you will try to get enough sleep (tricky, but sincerely try)
  • How you will remember to eat (and ideally, healthily)
  • How you will still get exercise (a walk in the park is fine; see some greenery and get some sunlight)
  • How you will avoid self-destructive urges (from indirect, e.g. drinking, to direct, e.g. suicidality)
  • How you will keep up with the other things important in your life (work, friends, family)
  • How you will actively work to process your grief (e.g. journaling, or perhaps grief counselling)

Some previous articles of ours that may help:

If it works, it works

If we are all unique, then any relationship between any two people is uniqueness squared. Little wonder, then, that our grief may be unique too. And it can be complicated further:

  • Sometimes we had a complicated relationship with someone
  • Sometimes the circumstances of their death were complicated

There is, for that matter, such a thing as “complicated grief”:

Read more: Complicated grief and prolonged grief disorder (Medical News Today)

We also previously reviewed a book on “ambiguous loss”, exploring grieving when we cannot grieve in the normal way because someone is gone and/but/maybe not gone.

For example, if someone is in a long-term coma from which they may never recover, or if they are missing-presumed-dead. Those kinds of situations are complicated too.

Unusual circumstances may call for unusual coping strategies, so how can we discern what is healthy and what isn’t?

The litmus test is: is it enabling you to continue going about your life in a way that allows you to fulfil your internal personal aspirations and external social responsibilities? If so, it’s probably healthy.

Look after yourself. And if you can, tell your loved ones you love them today.

Don’t Forget…

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  • How To Be 7.5x More Likely To Develop Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    First, what is it?

    Many more people have chronic fatigue, which is the symptom of being exhausted all the time, than have chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) which is the illness of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).

    This is because fatigue can be a symptom of many, many other conditions, and can be heavily influenced by lifestyle factors too.

    A lot of the advice for dealing with chronic fatigue is often the same in both cases, but some will be different, because for example:

    • If your fatigue is from some other condition, that condition probably impacts what lifestyle factors you are (and are not) able to change, too
    • If your fatigue is from lifestyle factors, that hopefully means you can change those and enjoy less fatigue…
      • But if it’s not from lifestyle factors, as in ME/CFS, then advice to “exercise more” etc is not going to help so much.

    There are ways to know the difference though:

    Check out: Do You Have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

    The chronic disease pipeline

    While it had been strongly suspected that COVID infection could lead to CFS, with long COVID having chronic fatigue as one of its characteristic symptoms, a research team led by Dr. Suzanne Vernon has now established the nature of the relationship.

    It was a large (n=13,224) longitudinal observational cohort study of people with no pre-existing ME/CFS, grouped according to their COVID infection status:

    1. acute infected, enrolled within 30 days of infection or enrolled as uninfected who became infected (n=4,515)
    2. post-acute infected, enrolled greater than 30 days after infection (n=7,270)
    3. uninfected (n=1,439).

    (to be clear, that last means “never infected”, or else they would be in group 2)

    Note: people who had COVID and were hospitalized for it were excluded from the study, so this risk is the risk represented by even just more “moderate” infections.

    What they found:

    ❝The proportion of all RECOVER-Adult participants that met criteria for ME/CFS following SARS-CoV-2 infection was 4.5% (531 of 11,785) compared to 0.6% (9 of 1439) in uninfected participants.❞

    There are then different numbers if we look per 100 person-years, as the study also did—in which case, we get a re-modelled increase in risk of 5x instead of 7.5x, but a) that’s still not good b) the “here-and-now” figures of 4.5% vs 0.6% are also relevant.

    Read in full: Incidence and Prevalence of Post-COVID-19 Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: A Report from the Observational RECOVER-Adult Study

    The killer nobody wants to talk about anymore

    Of course, as we all know the pandemic is over, because politicians declared it so, which is very reassuring.

    Nevertheless, COVID is currently the still 4th leading cause of death in the US, placing it higher than stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and others.

    See also: Emergency or Not, Covid Is Still Killing People. Here’s What Doctors Advise to Stay Safe

    So, while it’s very good to take care of our hearts, brains, blood sugars, and so forth, let’s at the very least continue to keep on top of our vaccinations, avoid enclosed crowded spaces where possible, etc.

    And for extra boosts to one’s chances: Why Some People Get Sick More (And How To Not Be One Of Them)

    What if I do get (or already have) long COVID and/or ME/CFS?

    Well, that is definitely going to suck, but there are still some things that can be done.

    Here’s a big one: How To Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue ← this will not, of course, cure you, but it’s a way of getting maximum nutrition for minimum effort, given that for someone with chronic fatigue, effort is a very finite resource that must be used sparingly

    Finally, here are some further resources:

    Support For Long COVID & Chronic Fatigue

    Take care!

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  • The Whys and Hows of Cutting Meats Out Of Your Diet

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    Meat in general, and red meat and processed meat in particular, have been associated with so many health risks, that it’s very reasonable to want to reduce, if not outright eliminate, our meat consumption.

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    It’s said that with a big enough “why” you can always find a “how”, but let’s make things easy!

    Meatless Mondays

    One of the biggest barriers to many people skipping the meat is “what will we even eat?”

    The idea of “Meatless Mondays” means that this question need only be answered once a week, and in doing that a few Mondays in a row, you’ll soon find you’re gradually building your repertoire of meatless meals, and finding it’s not so difficult after all.

    Then you might want to expand to “meat only on the weekends”, for example.

    Flexitarian

    This can be met with derision, “Yes and I’m teetotal, apart from wine”, but there is a practical aspect here:

    The idea is “I will choose vegetarian options, unless it’s really inconvenient for me to do so”, which wipes out any difficulty involved.

    After doing this for a while, you might find that as you get more used to vegetarian stuff, it’s almost never inconvenient to eat vegetarian.

    Then you might want to expand it to “I will choose vegan options, unless it’s really inconvenient for me to do so”

    Like-for-like substitutions

    Pretty much anything that can come from an animal, one can get a plant-based version of it nowadays. The healthiness (and cost!) of these substitutions can vary, but let’s face it, meat is neither the healthiest nor the cheapest thing out there these days either.

    If you have the money and don’t fancy leaping to lentils and beans, this can be a very quick and easy zero-effort change-over. Then once you’re up and running, maybe you can—at your leisure—see what all the fuss is about when it comes to tasty recipes with lentils and beans!

    That’s all we have time for today, but…

    We’re thinking of doing a piece making your favorite recipes plant-based (how to pick the right substitutions so the meal still tastes and “feels” the same), so let us know if you’d like that? Feel free to mention your favorite foods/meals too, as that’ll help us know what there’s a market for!

    You can do that by hitting reply to any of our emails, or using the handy feedback widget at the bottom!

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  • Powered by Plants – by Ocean Robbins & Nichole Dandrea-Russert

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