Stress kills. But not all the time, just most of the time. Stress, applied in a healthy way can be beneficial to health. But that’s only when you’re out in the wilderness and a saber tooth tiger wants you for lunchmeat. Then, when your fight or flight instinct kicks in, stress is appropriate. Or when your child runs out in front of a car and that fight or flight kicks in to save the child’s life, it’s okay then too.
Stress is interpreted by the body as a fight or flight instinct. Any function not needed to fight or flee from danger shuts down. This is okay once in awhile. The body is designed for that. But if this mechanism kicks in day in and day out in what we commonly refer to as “stress”, now we’ve got a problem. Now we have the foundation for disease.
It can be argued that everyone has stress. This is true, or at least I’ve rarely encountered someone who says they have no stress (but it happens). It is how you cope with stress that makes the difference. It is also how your body adapts that determines disease. When you enter a fight or flight response, your body releases stress hormones that long time unless you actively use some technique to lower them. These stress hormones cause increased retention of body fat, poor blood sugar control and changes in mood – especially depression, anxiety and feeling stressed. High stress hormone levels also impair memory and learning, and impairs cognitive performance.
Although cortisol (the main stress hormone) gives a quick burst of energy in a survival situation, it squelches your energy when there is chronic stress. If being attacked, it heightens your memory functions, but when chronic worsens it. As part of your anti-inflammatory response, during a fight or flight response cortisol lessens your sensitivity to pain; in chronic stress it interferes with the inflammatory response, resulting in more pain.
Cortisol is one of those hormones that we love it and hate it. If we keep our stress levels healthy, we enjoy homeostasis in the body. We have proper glucose metabolism and insulin regulation. Our blood pressure is perfect and our immune system is highly functioning. When we get ourselves into a
“prolonged stress response” our immune system weakens, we have sugar regulating disease such as hypoglycemia and diabetes and we suffer chronically high blood pressure.
Stress interferes with maintaining a healthy weight. Cortisol tells the body to store more fat. So the more cortisol release due to chronic stress, the more weight we gain and the more difficult to lose it. We see this mostly in the increase in abdominal fat. There have now been drawn some associations between abdominal fat and heart attacks, strokes, a rise in the so-called “bad” cholesterol and a diminishing of the “good” cholesterol. In addition, cortisol suppresses thyroid function which lowers the metabolism and… you guessed it, makes you gain more weight!
Stress, through the release of cortisol, decreases bone density and muscle tissue. This leaves you feeling weak and more prone to associated diseases. When we have a prolonged stress response it has an adverse effect on the entire endocrine system. The endocrine system comprises all the organs/glands that regulate hormones. The adrenal gland is one of the most effected glands. It is a small walnut-sized gland that sits above each kidney and is a part of the renal system. The adrenals secrete a number of hormones that are critical to health.
When continually called on to secrete epinephrine/adrenaline in the fight or flight response, they get a little tired out. So do you. The adrenals help give you sustained energy throughout the day, along with the thyroid. While in a prolonged stress response, the energy gets redirected and you get short-changed. Most fatigue is attributed to “adrenal fatigue”. Although adrenal fatigue is not a medically recognized disease except in its extreme state, most natural health practitioners have found that when they support the adrenals, energy is restored and the negative effects of the fight or flight response are mitigated.
Since we are all under stress, what we have to learn is how to counteract the effect of stress on our body in order to circumvent some of the awful diseases associated with it. To do that we need to eat a super healthy, nutritionally dense diet of whole, unadulterated produce, grains and meats. We need to exercise regularly, get plenty of sleep and relaxation. We need to have fun in life and not take life so seriously. We can manage stress by using some of the great techniques available today such as meditation, yoga, tai chi or qi gong. We can also take some quality herbs and whole food supplements designed to reduce anxiety and support adrenal function. Finally, we need to remember how to laugh- after all, according to several psychology journals.
Laughter is the best medicine of all!