We all feel it at some stage in our lives, some more than others. It's a word that is often used on a daily basis. Some of us deal with it better than others...
What I'm talking about is STRESS! Stress is basically what you feel when life's demands exceed your ability to meet those demands' and there are actually 2 types of stresses in our lives:
The first one is known as 'acute stress' and goes back in time to when we were hunters and gatherers; our bodies were designed to deal with life threatening situations in a 'flight or fight' response which leads to a chemical reaction in our brains and allow us to outrun any danger or stay and face it with a sudden burst of power.
This type of stress is what our bodies were designed to deal with - situations which have an immediate 'stressful' response and an almost immediate end to the situation - anything from someone coming up behind you and scaring you - to stepping out from the curb and almost being hit by a car - it's what we've come to call 'adrenalin rushes' in today's society.
The second type of stress is much more dangerous to our health and is known as chronic stress. This type of stress increases our Cortisol levels which if constantly high can lead to many types of health issues. Cortisol and Adrenalin are both types of hormones - however we only have enough Adrenalin in our bodies to last about 2 hours a day but Cortisol is in constant supply.
Now because our modern world rarely requires the evolutionary flight-or-fight response to stress, we deny our bodies the natural physical reaction to stress.
Unfortunately, our brain still registers stress in the same way as it always has, but because we no longer react to that stress with vigorous exercise (fighting or running away), our bodies store the stress response and continue to churn out high levels of stress hormones.
This means that most of our daily stresses now come from Chronic Stress - bills, traffic, family demands, work demands etc - and it is when we ponder, obsess and continually mull over the 'what ifs' of these stressful situations that we put ourselves in danger of chronically elevated Cortisol levels.
To compound the problem of physical Chronic stress, most of us at sometime in our daily lives also spend time making up 'imaginary' situations to stress about - this is when you think about all the 'what ifs' of a situation that hasn't happened yet; although all of the thinking occurs in your mind, your body still physically reacts to the 'imaginary' stress that you create.
One of the roles of Cortisol in our bodies is to restore energy stores following stress, and the way that it does this, is it releases glucose, fats and amino acids into the blood stream. Now while releasing 'fat' may sound good - if this continues over a prolonged period, a significant amount of muscle mass may be lost and an increase of fat accumulation around the abdominal region will occur (and this is the most dangerous area for fat to be stored).
The other downside of being constantly stressed is that elevated Cortisol levels will keep your appetite ramped up - so that you feel hungry almost all of the time. In addition to this, elevated Cortisol levels are also associated with the following long-term health issues:
- Obesity
- Decreased Muscle Mass & Bone Density
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Mood Swings (Anger and Irritability)
- Reduced Libido (sex drive)
- Impaired Immune Reponse
- Memory and Learning Impairment
- Increased symptoms of PMS (cramps/appetite)
- Increased menopausal side effects (hot flashes, night sweats)
- Diabetes
- Hypertension
- Insomnia
- Headaches
- Ulcers
Whilst it may not be possible to remove every stressful situation from your life, what is possible is to learn to deal with stress more effectively. The following are some simple things you can do:
- Exercise every day (this helps to reduce your cortisol levels)
- Take 5 minutes out every day to just focus on your breathing and think calm, relaxing thoughts
- Whenever you feel stressed, take a big slow deep breath in, shrug your shoulders up and then breathe out quickly and drop your shoulders down. Repeat this 3-5 times
- Eat foods that are healthy and nourish your body
- Try to get at least 7 hours sleep every night
- Use supplements if you feel that your diet is lacking and you are feeling particularly stressed; good supplements for stress are: B-complex Vitamins, Vitamin C, Magnesium & Calcium
And most importantly make sure you get a good dose of Vitamin H every day....H = Humour!
