StartUp Health Launches Weekly Op-Ed Column on Health Innovation
Kicking off the series: Insights from Neolth’s Katherine Grill and Claire Wheeler on stress management as a new prescription for chronic disease
We’re doing something new on the virtual pages of StartUp Health. Our global army of Health Transformers now pulls from almost 300 health innovation companies, and continues to grow. In order to give voice to the hundreds of entrepreneurs and innovators working to achieve health moonshots, we’re launching a weekly “Think Tank” series, our version of a digital op-ed column.
Our aim is to afford greater opportunity for the exploration of the biggest health issues of our time, presenting new insights and new ideas from the change makers behind the healthcare revolution. Kicking off this series is an editorial by Katherine Grill, PhD, Founder and CEO of Neolth and one of her company’s featured health practitioners, Claire Wheeler, MD, PhD.
If you’ve got some wisdom to drop and it’s related to one of our 11 Health Moonshots, reach out. We’d love to hear from you.
By Katherine Grill, PhD, Founder & CEO of Neolth (left), and Claire Wheeler, MD, PhD (right)
You don’t have to look far to find them — wellness programs offering healthier and happier lives. At the end of 2018, the Global Wellness Institute valued the global wellness economy at a whopping $4.2 trillion. While the connections between stress management and mental health are clear, the connections between stress and physical wellbeing are just beginning to emerge, giving us new insights into what it means to be well.
Stress is not just “in your head.” It’s more than a cognitive or emotional state, it’s a physical process. Here’s how it works: During periods of chronic stress, levels of the anti-inflammatory hormone cortisol get too high. To compensate, your body ignores cortisol. Unfortunately, this causes inflammation to increase drastically. When this happens, you can experience back pain, arthritis, even pelvic pain, as well as an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and depression. High cortisol also weakens your immune system, which is why it’s easier to catch a cold when you are stressed and why chronic stress is associated with an increased risk for serious diseases like HIV or cancer.
There’s more. Too much cortisol isn’t the only thing that leads to chronic illness. When you are stressed, your brain sends constant messages to your vital organs that something is wrong. This can cause reproductive, cardiac and digestive issues. That’s why stress is also a risk factor for infertility, heart disease and IBS.
The medical community has known about these detrimental effects of stress for a long time, yet has been slow on the uptake when it comes to making stress management a standard treatment for patients with chronic disease. This is largely due to the mind-body schism in medicine: patients with mental health conditions are given emotional support, while patients with physical conditions are given medications, exercise and nutrition interventions. Despite the science showing common physical complaints like headaches, muscle tension, upset stomach, fatigue, high blood pressure, irregular menstrual cycles, and back or neck pain are stress-related, patients with these symptoms are not typically prescribed stress management. Unfortunately, if their stress is not addressed these patients will continue to experience health problems.
Message Katherine Grill, PhD on StartUp Health HQ or email [email protected]Neolth.
A deeper look at current care models for patients with chronic diseases reveals a huge gap in supportive care. To move towards a model of holistic chronic disease management, stress reduction must be part of standard medical treatment. This will not only improve patient quality of life, but can also improve physical health.
As the Founder and CEO and a featured practitioner of Neolth, increasing access to holistic chronic care management is our moonshot. The team recognized this gap in care and created a digital platform that supports the unique physical, emotional and behavioral needs of people living with chronic illness. Our clinical decision making algorithm uses medical expertise, artificial intelligence and patient feedback to build and continuously update personalized stress management plans for patients. With the capacity for provider prescribing and monitoring, our platform is fully integrated into the clinical workflow.
Building the Neolth platform is our first step towards making stress management a standard of care for patients with chronic disease, but our work isn’t done. Within the digital health field, we must ensure that we are not perpetuating the mind-body schism of medicine. We must educate about stress as a cause of disease and advocate for stress reduction as standard treatment for patients with physical illness. To successfully combat the chronic disease epidemic, we must give patients emotional support for dealing with the stresses of being ill.
Message Katherine Grill, PhD on StartUp Health HQ or email [email protected]Neolth.
about StartUp Health Moonshot Academy, the Mental Health & Happiness Moonshot and Brain HealthMoonshot.
Sign up for StartUp Health Insider to receive industry news, funding insights, special access to events, and more delivered to your inbox every Wednesday.
StartUp Health Launches Weekly Op-Ed Column on Health Innovation was originally published in Health Transformer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.