Thank you for joining us for episode 488 of Live Happy Now.

Since the pandemic, there has been a 70% increase in stress-based illnesses, and today's

guest says that's no coincidence.

I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and this week I'm talking with Dr. David Clark, whose practice

in internal medicine and gastroenterology led him to explore how stress and emotions create

chronic pain.

As president of the nonprofit Psychophysiologic Disorders Association, he is dedicated to

educating people about stress-related, brain-generated medical conditions.

He's here to talk about what's driving the rise in stress-related illnesses and, importantly, what we can do about it.

Let's have a listen.

Dave, thank you so much for joining me on Live Happy Now.

Great to be with you, Paula.

Thanks so much for having me.

This is a topic that I

have wanted to talk to you about for a little while because the work that you're doing is so

important. We've known for a long time that stress and illness are related, but right now,

you're saying that we're seeing an explosion in stress-based illness. So I guess, first of all, what do you see

is driving such a significant increase in it? You know, it's everything you're hearing about

in the news. It was the pandemic for a long time. Now, that's improving in 2024, but we've all

become more isolated, so much of working at home. We're a little bit more wary of being in

big crowds. There's been tremendous pressure on our young people who are out of school for a period

of time and now they're trying to reintegrate. We've got a lot of political unrest in the United

...