Jim KwikFounder, Kwik Brain · Brain Coach

How stress is impacting your health! 👀

28 Mar 2025 · 1 min

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1:06

In this interview segment, Jim Kwik asks the guest how their perspective on stress has changed when considered as part of an overall medical diagnosis. The guest (Speaker B) explains that 60–80% of patients who see a doctor have a stress‑related component to their visit, yet clinicians often dismiss it with generic advice to “relax” or “get over it.” This creates a paradox where patients are reassured that nothing is physically wrong, but the real impact of stress is minimized. The guest attributes this to systemic pressures: doctors are overloaded, focusing on measurable conditions like cholesterol, diabetes, and heart disease, leaving stress—an elephant in the exam room—unaddressed despite its involvement in nearly every visit. The discussion highlights the gap between patient experience of stress and the healthcare system’s capacity to address it.

Chapters

How do you see stress differently now as a part of an overall diagnosis than you did while training to become a doctor?
60 to 80% of people who go to a doctor have a stress-related component. And then your doctor says, oh, you're fine, everything's great, it's just stress. Many of us have heard that. There's not really much else. Go try to relax. And so you're kind of left to your own devices. You know, you're reassured like, okay, my symptom is not due to something actually happening in my body, but it is very real. And it's almost like this mind over matter mindset, like just Get over it. It's just stress. And so in many ways, stress is truly that elephant in the exam room. It is not addressed. It feels like doctors don't really talk about stress, not because it is an individual failing. It is not something wrong with doctors. Doctors simply have too much work to do. And so we know that the healthcare system is very broken and they're just really doing the best they can. And so stress, when you're trying to focus on your patient's cholesterol and diabetes and heart disease, stress is often left to the wayside. And yet it is involved. Involved in nearly every single visit.