‘The Cure Is Not In The Pill Bottle’ — Doctor’s TEDx Talk On Stress, Overeating


Divi Chandna is a practicing physician whose recent speech, a part of the “TEDxMontrealWomen” TEDx Talks, can be watched below. Dr. Divi told her audience that one out of three of them would develop some kind of chronic disease problem, like depression, etc. Are people doomed to suffer from these problems? Dr. Divi said no. She suffered from chronic pain herself, with her immune system crashing. The problem was something that teachers have spoken about for decades: stress. But it’s not just the normal stress that can happen when people are dealing with their kids or work-related stressors. Stress is anything that puts bodies into the fight-or-flight response, or anything outside of the normal feelings. With people raised to ignore emotions, most folks put the focus on doing things and achieving accomplishments to try and make feelings of inadequacies go away.

Dr. Divi was spiraling into anorexia when she was younger, with her body obsession spilling into her entire life. By 28 years of age, Dr. Divi had become a doctor, moved out west and had married a man whom she called the “then” man of her dreams, much to the humor of the TEDx Talks audience.

Over time, she needed pain killers, antibiotics and antihistamine on a daily basis just to make it through the day. Dr. Divi knew something had to change. She started taking a yoga class that helped her realize that her thoughts were in overdrive. Eventually, Dr. Divi told herself to stop “thinking” her way through her day with her mind, but to move down to her heart to “feel” her way through her day.

Dr. Divi discussed the effects of cortisol on the body, which can have a negative effect on the body by causing people to become more prone to infection, to have tight muscles that can cause pain, as well as cause people to crave carbs and gain weight. With $400 billion spent on medicines like high blood pressure meds, antibiotics and more annually, a new look at the cure for the cause of such symptoms is important.

Dr. Divi taught her patients about how to deal with their emotions and improve their quality of life to shift their depression, gut issues, infertility and more. She called it a process that wasn’t hard to adopt. Similar to mind renewal spoken of by some faiths, Dr. Divi taught the audience how to shift away from negative thoughts that caused physical pain and problems.

Actions and behaviors are a direct result of belief systems, reported the doctor, which create emotions. If those emotions don’t feel good, cortisol can kick in. There are times that people don’t know how they feel — and it can be challenging to identify the emotion and the thought behind that emotion. Once a person discovers that bad emotion, they can change their thoughts to a thought that feels better than the older, worse-feeling thought. Dr. Divi teaches her patients to think better thoughts, and hold onto those thoughts at least for a few breaths in the beginning. That’s one way to stop what she called the “cortisol cascade.”

Dr. Divi realized that she used to think she wasn’t good enough, that her achievements mattered more than her being. But it was too big of a leap to go from “I’m not good enough” to “I’m good enough” for the good doctor. Eventually, she took baby steps in the process to figure out that as a human being, her life has value and worth, internally. She feels more peace and more at east now. When the old, bad thoughts creep in, she brings back the better thoughts, so the old thoughts will leave.

With more than 3,000 views since February 8, the YouTube video is gaining in views.

[Featured Image by Sue Ogrocki/AP Images]

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