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Even while I was living with my parents post-graduate school, driving an hour one way to work, learning a new job, studying for my functional medicine certification, planning a wedding, and supporting my now-husband through graduate school, I didn’t realize how much stress I was under.
It wasn’t until I started the certification module on stress that I realized I fit the mold for the classic stress patient. I’ll go more in detail of what that means in a little bit, but I was shocked. I thought my life was normal!
The sad part is, it was.
If you’re reading this right now I’d bet the laundry list of stressful things you’re juggling isn’t any shorter than mine was (and still is).
While many of us are praised for our ability to handle so many stressful things, we don’t realize that the stressful lives we lead are actually pushing us down a road that leads to most of the chronic diseases that are so common in America today, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s. All of these, and many more, can all be tied back to stress and the inflammation it causes.
I have a significant family history of Alzheimer’s, and once I learned about this connection, I knew something had to change or I was destined for a life of fear and ultimately memory loss.
What I’m going to share with you today has changed my life. I don’t feel overwhelmed by my life anymore. I feel in charge and in control. I don’t feel tired, in fact I have lots of energy! I’m joyful; I’m happy; and I’m grateful. Best of all, I’m no longer in fear of dying of Alzheimer’s disease.
These strategies haven’t just worked for me either. My clients use them as well, and I’ve seen huge transformations in their health, mental state, and overall well-being.
If this has worked for me and my clients, it can work for you too.
Let’s dive in to how stress causes disease and what you can do to combat it, preventing (and even reverse) disease.
What Stress Is
Stress is simply when your body runs at a level beyond where it was meant to run.
Think of your body as a bank account and stress as spending money. If you have a healthy balance, your rest and recovery deposits outweigh your stress credits, and you live a happy, energy-filled life. On the other hand if you have more stress credits than rest and recovery deposits, you’ll soon overdraft. This is when we start feeling tired, burnt out, and overwhelmed.
There are four main stressors that chip away at our body bank account. Let’s go over those now.
The Four Main Stressors
There are many different things and events that the body perceives as stress, but they can all be broken down into four main categories:
1. Mental and emotional stress
Mental and emotional stress is what we all think of when we think of something being stressful. However, it’s just 25% of what causes the body’s stress systems to go nuts.
This may be a problem area for you if you frequently experience feelings of anxiety; suffer from depression or mood swings; have difficulty getting motivated; frequently experience feelings of agitation, anger, fear, or worry; consider your job, relationships, or finances daily stresses; or are a caregiver for a parent or a disabled child.
2. Blood sugar imbalance
Blood sugar imbalance is when your blood sugar acts like a roller coaster instead of a lazy river.
It happens when you eat a diet of mostly simple carbs. I’m talking about bread, pasta, candy, chips, crackers, ice cream, french fries… the list goes on and on and I’m describing the typical American diet. I usually call it the Standard American Diet, and, yes, that spells “sad.”
While there is usually some protein and fat involved, the vast majority of the typical American diet is made of carbs that are almost instantly digested into sugar. This sugar is rapidly absorbed into the blood stream, making your blood sugar skyrocket. You’ll usually feel a surge of energy here. Is there anyone else out there that will eat for energy sometimes?
Anyway, when your blood sugar skyrockets, your pancreas sounds the alarm and pumps out tons of insulin to get that sugar out the blood. If left in the blood, it can cause damage to nerves, electrolyte balances, and a ton of other things that are very dangerous to mess with.
So when insulin is released, it basically shoves all that sugar into your cells where some of it is used, but most of it is stored as fat. By the way, the main side effect of insulin medications is weight gain.
Anywho, since the pancreas had to release so much insulin, it’s now overcorrected and taken too much sugar out of your blood causing you to suddenly feel sleepy. Does this cycle sound familiar?
Blood sugar imbalance may be a problem for you if you experience symptoms of low blood sugar (dizziness, shakiness, or brain fog) between or after meals, if you frequently miss or delay meals, frequently crave sugar or carbohydrates, consume lots of sugar or refined carbs (this means they’re processed and come with a label), if you are diabetic or pre-diabetic, regularly consume alcohol or caffeine (especially with sugary things added in), or if you consume food within about two hours of bedtime.
3. Sleep cycle disturbance
Sleep is when the body repairs itself and where you get many of your debits for your body bank account. If we aren’t getting enough good sleep, our bodies can’t finish the clean up job, leaving us with a mess to being the next day.
As you can probably imagine, this is very stressful on the body. In fact, it’s called oxidative stress, or stress at the cellular level.
Sleep is likely an issue for you if you have problems falling or staying asleep, don’t get 7 to 8 hours every night, don’t feel rested when you wake up, if you work second or third shift or keep late night hours, if you don’t block blue light from your eyes at least two hours before bed, if you eat within two hours of bedtime, if you feel drowsy throughout the day, or if you snore.
4. Inflammatory imbalance
Inflammation is the body’s response to stress.
Ironically, stress causes more inflammation as well, creating a vicious cycle.
Many times, this comes in to play once one of the above stressors has created enough, constant stress on the body that the immune system gets tired and confused. At this point, it’s fighting all the time and never has a chance to step back and allow repairs to happen.
There are many other causes of inflammation as well, including, but not limited to, toxins, chronic infections, lack of nutrients, allergens, and more.
The continuing inflammation causes more and more damage at the cellular level (that oxidative stress again). If not corrected, this can cause major shifts and imbalances in the overall inflammatory balance of the body, eventually leading to dysfunction of tissues, and even organs.
This may be a problem for you if you suffer from musculoskeletal conditions such as headaches or muscle, back, or joint pain; gastrointestinal conditions such as IBS, Crohn’s disease, or diverticulitis; dermatological conditions like hives, eczema, or psoriasis; respiratory issues such as asthma, bronchitis, seasonal allergies, or hay fever; autoimmune conditions such as MS, lupus, or rheumatoid arthritis; or other things like food allergies, chronic infections, or frequent illness. Please note, this is absolutely not an exhaustive list. In fact, I don’t know of any chronic condition that is not somehow linked to inflammation.
How Stress Affects the Body
We were made to handle occasional stress, not constant stress.
With short-term stressors, your body thinks you’re running from a bear, both adrenaline and cortisol are released, and you enter fight or flight mode.
Adrenaline increases your heart rate, blood pressure, and energy supplies. Cortisol increases blood sugars for immediate energy, enhances your brain’s use of sugar, and increases the availability of things that repair tissues (like when you get a cut).
With this response, your body is fighting for short-term survival, so it doesn’t really care about the body processes that promote long-term survival (things like immune system regulation, digestion, and reproduction). These processes are slowed way down.
When the stressor goes away, adrenaline and cortisol levels, as well as the body’s processes, return to normal.
However, when the stressor doesn’t go away and becomes a part of daily life, the stress response stays on. Cortisol levels persist, as well as all of its downstream effects.
You end up living a life where your body isn’t focused on long-term survival, even if you are.
High levels of cortisol disrupt almost all your body’s processes and is toxic to your brain. It promotes blood sugar imbalance, which we know is a stressor on the body itself, as well as obesity. Both of these are huge risk factors for diabetes.
You’ll also end up with carbohydrate cravings, leaky gut, and more inflammation. This will turn into leaky brain, which will worsen brain function.
High cortisol levels also cause calcium to leech out of your bones and into your bloodstream. This not only reduces your bone density, but the calcium can deposit in your blood vessels, both in and out of the brain. This is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
Last, but not least, high cortisol attacks the brain processes of making new neurons as well as the growth and maintenance of neurons associated with memory formation.
Hellooooooo!
Stress is causing you to get fat and tired and is putting you at risk of developing a number of diseases including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s, if you haven’t already. That’s not cool.
The truth is, to quote Dr. Dale Bredesen:
“We were not meant to lead the lives many of us lead – lives of sugar-laden diets, late nights with incandescent lights, constant anxiety about work, poor sleep, poor nutrition, and exposure to hundreds of toxic chemicals.”
All of these things contribute to our chronic stress levels, and this is perhaps why Americans are so unhealthy despite the amount of money we spend on our health.
Something has to change.
7 Easy Ways to Reduce Stress
I’d like to say that there will always be stressors out there and we really can’t change that.
Some stressors, however, we have control over. These mainly involve food and sleep.
We can also alter how our bodies react to the stress we can’t change.
These are the top ways I’ve been able to reduce overall stress for myself and my clients.
1. Eat real food
I go into tons of detail in a few other posts, so I won’t repeat myself here. To read on, since this part is so important, click on the links below.
2. Ensure you get good sleep
There is so much to this one, I had to write another post to cover it all the tips I had. Click here to check it out.
3. Yoga
Many people, including myself, love yoga. It’s a great form of exercise that involves strength, stretching, balance, as well as focused breathing. All of these combined make it the perfect way to exercise and reduce stress at the same time.
There aren’t many things that can claim all that.
Yoga (as well as meditation) has also been shown to help protect the brain. Yay!
Don’t feel like you have to start with an hour! Most of my own sessions are only 20 to 30 minutes long.
I use, and highly recommend, the Down Dog app. Click here to check it out for yourself.
4. Meditation
Most of my patients are skeptical about trying meditation if they’ve never done it before. You might feel silly or embarrassed that you can’t “focus” or “let your mind go.”
What I’ve learned in the past few years though is that all meditation really is is being able to lose yourself in something.
If that’s traditional medication where you’re sitting cross-legged with your palms facing up listening to music, go for it! However, it might be gardening, rock climbing, or dancing. For me, it’s weightlifting.
Whatever it is, try doing it for at least 5 minutes a day (although that might be hard when it comes to rock climbing). You may also need to experiment to find your best way to meditate.
5. Deep breathing
Deep breathing can be a form of mediation, but I love this one so much I thought it deserved its own explanation.
There are tons of different breathing techniques, but the most important part is that you breathe from your belly.
When you breathe in, your belly should poke out and your chest should barely move. This might take some practice if you’ve never done this before. I find it helpful to look in the mirror as I’m practicing.
I find that most people prefer box breathing because it’s easy. For this particular breathing technique, you breathe in for four counts, hold for four counts, breathe out for four counts, hold for four counts, and repeat. I’d recommend starting with 5 minutes a day.
Keep in mind, deep breathing can be as simple as taking a few, deep, slow, belly breaths. This one seems to be most helpful when you’re facing an immediate stressor.
6. Finding joy
All this means is to do something that brings you joy, preferably every day.
Something small that you could fit into 5 minutes might be writing in a gratitude journal.
Something that might take longer could be a nature walk. Longer things might require more planning and scheduling, but by all means schedule something that brings you joy at least once a week!
Please note that this may overlap with meditation, especially if you’re not one to do traditional meditation.
7. Declutter
Our stress levels naturally rise when we are in a cluttered and disorganized environment. I’ll be writing a whole post on this and how to do it soon, so be on the lookout for it!
What works best for you many not be what works best for me, and that’s okay.
The key is to stay consistent, so you re-teach your body how to get back into rest and digest mode and turn off the cortisol for a little bit. Over time (I’m talking months not days), this builds up our metabolic reserves and resiliency, allowing our bodies to be more flexible and not get stuck in a chronically stressed out state.
Just remember that finding your right balance will take time, however, you may benefit from the addition of targeted supplements to help your body recover faster.
What supplements will work best for you depend on what stage of stress you’re in, and because people don’t always respond the same way to stress and symptoms are not always a differentiator, testing is the best way to determine that.
If you believe stress may be a big contributor to your declining health or cognitive function, let’s talk about how testing your adrenals can start turning your trajectory around.
The longer you wait, the longer your healing journey will be, so use the link below to schedule a free 20-minute call with me.
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