Top 3 sources of stress: What’s your favorite flavor?
In today’s culture we wear stress like an ugly Christmas sweater, embracing the excess with twisted pride and the overload as normal. And that was before the pandemic. It seems normal to be anxious, slightly depressed, suffering from chronic gut pain, inflammation and autoimmune dysfunction. These are all common symptoms of stress overload. But common isn't normal and normal isn't always optimal. There are multiple ways to categorize all the different kinds of stress but we can break it down into three basic flavors: physical stress, chemical stress and psycho emotional stress.
Physical, Chemical & Psycho Emotional Stress
Most likely you have experienced any or all of these yourself creating your own unique stress blends without conscious awareness. Often what starts as one type of stress can quickly melt into another. Eventually it becomes difficult to tell the difference between them because a symptom of one can quickly become another cause that leads to more symptoms. It’s important to keep in mind that no two people are alike. What’s traumatic for one person might be nothing for another. Our past success (or lack of success) dealing with stress or traumatic events often determines how well we handle new stress but there is no expiration date on a stress response from any particular event.
Stress is an unavoidable contributor to almost all disease. Building resilience, increasing our ability to handle difficult things, should be a priority in preventative healthcare. There are simple ways that we can lessen the burden that physical, chemical & emotional stress places on the body and make significant improvements to our overall health beyond simply feeling less stressed.
Physical stress
This category includes any physical injury, chronic pain, illness, inflammation, surgery and even high intensity exercise. Anything that affects the body, both internally or externally, can be physically stressful. The body recognizes illness or injury as a threat to our survival and triggers a sympathetic nervous system response that includes a cascade of stress hormones to help us survive the moment and to return to some variation of homeostasis.
Often we don't attribute any of our stress response to physical injury in the body. Maybe because generally, the medical community tends to treat people as a list of separate symptoms rather than a whole being. We might not think of injury, illness or surgery as something traumatic. But to the body it is. Even if that surgery or injury may have started out voluntary or elective and especially if it was necessary to save our lives.
Let’s walk through an example of one type of physical stress.
Let's say you are an avid tennis player and you enjoy playing tennis every other evening with friends. One particular evening you reach out to hit the ball and you trip. You reach out to catch yourself and your wrist breaks requiring surgery and pins in order to heal.
Many of us would not consider breaking a bone while playing a game traumatic. Maybe we wouldn't even consider it stressful. But think about it from the body's point of view.
There was a loss of balance. The body reacts faster than thought to prevent life threatening injury. A broken bone triggers hormone responses that try to limit the pain. Surgery is another “attack” on the body. The drugs put another stress on the body’s systems. There may be a significant amount of recovery time including immobilization and physical therapy which can seem to the body like another threat.
While all this is happening, the brain associates the memory of this event with physical sensations and encodes them with certain emotions like fear, anxiety and vulnerability in order to protect you from future injury. The stronger the emotion the stronger the memory. These connections can be so strong that they can override rational thought. As in the case of white coat syndrome, where the memory of a treatment can trigger high blood pressure, panic attacks or even the full blown physical symptoms of that treatment.
The body doesn’t care if an injury comes out of fun, healthy lifestyle choices. It doesn’t care that surgery or physical therapy is necessary to heal. The body and primitive brain has no context, no rational understanding of modern medicine. It feels what it feels and does what it needs to do to keep you alive the same way it would if there was a tiger in the room.
Physical stress can be good. The stress of heavy weights can build stronger muscles. The stress of weight bearing exercise can help build stronger bones. The stress of running or cycling or rowing can build cardiovascular fitness. The stress of holding a plank can strengthen the core. But just like anything else in the wellness world dosage matters.
Regular exercise is important for maintaining good physical health and for lowering our overall stress levels. But excessive amounts of high intensity high impact movement on the body often does the opposite. High intensity exercise floods the body with stress hormones and can overwhelm an already overwhelmed nervous system. You can get the physical benefits of high intensity exercise with once (max twice) a week. Trying to max your intensity every day doesn’t get you to peak conditioning, it gets you a plateau.
Just like strength training for the body, we need nervous system strength training. Being able to objectively notice a physical sensation in the body without becoming overwhelmed by it is a skill that can be practiced. Cross training with yoga, trauma release exercise, or other forms of mind body practice can help build that kind of awareness and improve resilience.
Pay attention to how your body feels. Being sore all the time is a symptom of overtraining and inflammation in the body. Chronic pain and inflammation is a not so subtle symptom of stress overload.
Chemical stress
Chemical stressors are anything you consume that makes your body have to work harder to function. They can be prescription medicine (including birth control), over the counter medicine, recreational drugs or alcohol, caffeine, food, exposure to household chemicals, toxins and pesticides.
We know that there are things that are not good for us to eat; excessive amounts of sugar, excessive amounts of alcohol, excessive amounts of fat. But we don't really think about what we eat or the toxic ingredients in our products as an added layer of stress on the body.
The good news is we have complete control over everything we consume. That's why, what you put on your plate might be the perfect place to start if you're feeling overwhelmed by stress.
Here’s why you should listen to your gut...
Preservatives in food (the ones no one can pronounce), artificial sweeteners and excessive amounts of hidden sugars in processed food and drinks wreak havoc on the balance of bacteria in the gut. The health and diversity of the microbiome is critical in supporting a strong immune system and balancing serotonin, dopamine and cortisol levels. The gut and it’s microbiome is basically in charge of sending status reports to the brain, through the vagus nerve, to tell it how the body is doing and fighting off infections of all kinds. Basically the gut tells our brain that we’re OK or not OK.
Each type of bacteria that’s found in the gut has a job. It might be digesting certain types of food, or extracting a certain vitamin or producing a neurotransmitter like serotonin. When we eat we aren’t really feeding ourselves, we’re feeding the bacteria that live in our gut. The amount and diversity of those bacteria is determined by the types and diversity of the foods we eat.
If we eat the same foods everyday we start to limit that bacteria diversity. If our diet is very high in processed empty calories and sugar, the balance of the numbers of bacteria can get out of control. This is where you can see gut dysfunctions like IBS, IBD, and SIBO and others that are characterized by an overgrowth of one bacteria or another.
Alcohol and antibiotics as well as other drugs and medicines also disrupt gut bacteria by actually killing them off. When the ecosystem in the gut struggles with balance, so does our immune system and our mental health.
Happy belly - Happier YOU!
The easiest fastest way to see improvement in our mental health and immune system function is to clean up what we put on our plate. It only takes 28 days to shift the balance in the gut. Try one of these new habits for the next 28 days and feel the difference…
Increase the number and variety of fruits and vegetables you eat throughout the week. High fiber fruit & vegetables are loaded with pre-biotics and are the building blocks of immune boosting probiotics.
Shop the edges of the grocery store and eliminate anything with a label on it or that has ingredients you can’t pronounce.
Replace your beverages with water.
Limit the alcohol.
Try adding fermented foods. Sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha.
The happier your gut is, the happier you are! Take the Happy Belly Breakfast Salad Challenge
Psycho emotional stress
This is the one that most people already understand as stress. This is our emotional reaction to everything and anything that happens to us and around us. Perhaps it’s your own personal rat race that is punctuated with worries, ruminating over past mistakes, perfectionist tendencies sprinkled with resentment, guilt, and self-loathing. I think of psycho-emotional stress as an inner bully. It’s a false perception of reality that keeps the nervous system in fight or flight beyond what’s necessary.
This kind of stress is a threat that doesn’t have to BE real to FEEL real. Sometimes we’re our own worst enemy. We carry the emotionally charged moments of our history around with us like little ticking time bombs. It doesn’t matter if you’re actually in life or death danger in the present moment. If a situation is enough like the one the brain remembers, your memories can overpower the rational side of the brain and take action to save your life.
Simply getting lost in a memory (traumatic or otherwise) can trigger a cascade of hormones, the same physiologic responses throughout the body that happened at the time of the original experience. Conversely, physical sensations in the body can trigger an emotional response or memory. This is why it’s so important to build an accurate awareness of the connection between the mind and body.
The mind and body are in constant communication. Receiving feedback from the body is how we navigate in our world. When the brain perceives a threat, or gets a message from the body that something isn’t ok it doesn’t wait to check in with your rational mind before it reacts. Often we trigger those reactions from our own internal dialogue or by misinterpreting bodily sensations.
While you can’t simply tell your body to calm down or talk yourself out of a panic attack you can start to practice present moment awareness by replacing negative thoughts to relieve some of the internal pressure and chronic stress that you’re exposing yourself to every day.
Mindfulness & Quieting your inner bully
Notice
For many of us negative self talk is our default and that can be hard to shake. Awareness of how you think about yourself will be the biggest challenge in the beginning. Journaling can be helpful here.
Create
Opposites create balance. Create a positive present statement that is the exact opposite of one of the negative thoughts that you notice in your head. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It could just be one word.
Replace
Use your new positive present statement to replace the negative thought EVERY time you notice it. Write it on scraps of paper and post them around where you can see them all the time.
Human beings are hard wired to the negative. It isn’t something you need to beat yourself up over. Simply ask yourself if you would say those things to your best friend. If not, then it’s most likely a thought that can be replaced. Changing the way we think is probably the hardest training we’ll ever do but with practice can yield great results.
Understanding connection
Physical, chemical and emotional stress can overlap depending on the circumstances. It’s easy to see how symptoms of one might become a cause of another stress response despite having evolved to be protective. Unfortunately that evolution hasn’t caught up with our modern variations of stress, tension and trauma. Simply shifting our intention with movement, nutrition and inner connection can reduce the burden of stress and free us up to be more resilient when the big stuff hits.
Big stuff like a global pandemic.
Because all of our stress is related to and through the body, we can use our connection to the body to ease that burden. Becoming more aware of the balance of intensity in our exercise. Supporting the gut with fruits & vegetables, limiting alcohol, exposure to chemicals and over the counter meds. Practicing mindful awareness by replacing our negative inner voice. And allowing ourselves to objectively notice a physical sensation in the body without becoming overwhelmed by it are all skills that build resilience, boost the immune system and can make lasting physical and mental health improvements. It’s all within our reach.
My name is Ericka Thomas. I created Elemental Kinetics and Kinetic Grace to be a unique fusion of yoga and trauma release exercise to help people find balance between real health and real life.
Fitness and wellness should go beyond what the eyes can see.
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