Benjamin Strand/ Winonan

Mayo Clinic doctor Edward Creagan “stressed” the importance of stress relief to a crowd of around fifty people gathered Friday, Oct. 3 in Kryzsko Commons titled, “How to Survive Stress in the 21st Century.”

Tina Krause, programming coordinator for the Outreach and Continued Education Department, said Winona State University brought Creagan to contribute to the university’s mission of fulfilling wellness.

“We want to promote different ways to exchange, share and learn about health and wellness,” Krause said. “Bringing Creagan in to speak gave us that opportunity.”

Creagan is a cancer specialist at Mayo Clinic, a graduate of their school of medicine and has doctored cancer patients for 37 years.

One of Creagan’s points made in his keynote presentation was learning how to say “no.”

“By learning to say ‘no,’ you can open a whole new realm of opportunities of what we can do with our life,” Creagan said.

Creagan said stress and burnout are “cyphoning” off our energy necessary to carry out our everyday tasks.

“75 percent of our life quality is reflected upon our own life decisions,” Creagan said, “If you don’t learn to say ‘no,’ your physical health will go down the tubes.”

To combat burdens, Creagan offered a few tips on how to reduce and manage stress. One tip he offered was called psychological disengagement.

“It is important to create a place where you can unplug from your stress,” Creagan said, “Create a little box where you can put all the bad stuff.”

By doing this, Creagan said it allows people to avoid bringing problems home and letting them affect others.

Creagan also emphasized the importance of having someone they trust to go to with a problem. Without this kind of person, it is difficult to recognize and tackle the issues of stress, Creagan said.

He said all humans have limits and those limits must be acknowledged because “you can’t give what you don’t have.”

“Make a list of your limits, learn to say ‘no,’ and you will learn to manage your stress by decision-making and self-awareness,” Creagan said.

Creagan also encouraged more sleep.

“Being awake for 17 hours on fragmented sleep and not getting the recommended eight hours is like operating with a blood-alcohol content of .08 percent,” Creagan said.

Creagan said often times people do not realize it, but having a regular sleep schedule where they get restorative sleep (sleep that makes the person feel refreshed and engaged) is crucial to being able to operate at full functionality on a daily basis.

To tie it all together, Creagan talked about his “Three Cs:” conditioning, connections and concentration.

Creagan said to walk for 30 minutes everyday and spend time in solitude, know someone trustworthy and eliminate distractions because “distractions kill.”