Understanding The Impact Of Stress

Stress, as the body interprets and is impacted by it, is so much more than an emotion we experience. Stress, simply put, is anything that threatens our safety or our default mode (the state of being that we most commonly experience). What people, especially high achievers, don’t tend to realize is just how many types of stress they are subjected to daily.  

There are four main categories of stress:

Physical Stress

This is the stress that our body experiences through our daily movement, postures and activity. The right physical stresses, in the RIGHT doses, is beneficial and makes our bodies stronger more efficient machines (ie. going to the gym). However, even exercise in too high a dose, or inappropriate times can cause our bodies start to break down.  

Not all physical stress is good however. Poor posture, excessive physical strain and even repetitive movements can lead to inflammation and a breakdown in certain areas of the body.

Environmental Stress

Environmental stress are the stressors that are present in our external world that can have a negative and detrimental impact on the body. These stressors are typically considered “hidden” stresses because, despite their prevalence in our world, few people actually realize the impact they have. Under the umbrella of environmental stress, we have the subcategories of chemical, electromagnetic and thermal stress.

Chemical stress: This includes the chemicals we are exposed to in the air, in our water, through medications, make-up or skin care products, cleaning products and containers and through our hygiene regimes. This high exposure to chemicals in our daily life can lead to illnesses and health issues.

Electromagnetic: Stress of this kind relates to the electronic frequencies released by our technology, including computers, TV’s, laptops/computers, mobile phones, microwaves, electric blankets, etc.

Thermal: These stressors are related to too hot or too cold for a long of a period.

Psychic or Mental Stress

This includes all the types of stress that we mostly commonly think of when we think of stress. Whether it be work deadlines, issues with friends/family/ partners, abusive or negative thoughts (from others and ourselves), religious and societal pressures, etc.

Nutritional Stress

Despite the existence of the food pyramid (or food plate) we’re not all meant to eat the same foods. Our nutritional needs are very primal and dependent on our ancestry and where their tribes lived (near the ocean/main water supplies or more inland). In his book Nutrition and Degeneration Western A Price looks at the effect of nutrition and the introduction of western diets (especially the inclusion of processed food and sugar) on indigenous tribes around the world. The differences between just two generations within the same tribe are astounding. Not only are we eating the wrong foods for our bodies and preparing our foods in unhealthy ways, our food tend to have so many unnecessary inclusions like preservatives, colourings, thickeners, emulsifiers, not to mention hormones and drugs added to our protein sources, and pesticides added to our plant sources.

Our bodies, as sophisticated as they are, do not differentiate between any of these forms of stress. Simply put, our bodies don’t have a “good” stress and “bad” stress basket, putting the things we consciously consider good stress (ie. exercising daily) in the “good” pile, while putting everything else into the “bad” pile. Everything goes into one basket.  

When our stress buckets become full, the breakdown of the body systems becomes more and more evident. It’s important to note that we can live in a state of being overly stressed for up to thirteen years before we really start to experience the impact of those stressors.

When our body perceives stress, our HPA Axis (Hypothalmic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis) is “turned on”. This is our body’s neural and hormonal response, preparing us for fight or flight. Our hypothalamus and pituitary glands release a series of hormones, telling our adrenal glands to release epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine and cortisol into our bloodstream. The result is our heart rate increases, our breathing rate increases, our pupils dilate, the blood vessels that supply our skeletal muscles dilate (get bigger), while the blood supply to our digestive system is constricted. Our brain instructs our gut to empty, resulting in the quickest possible way to remove any food that is in our digestive tract (leading to vomiting or diarrhea).

Most hormones in our body have a negative feedback system in place to stop the production of hormones when they reach a certain concentration level. In essence, when the brain (hypothalamus) senses high concentrations of a specific hormone in the body, it releases inhibiting hormones to “turn off” the target gland. The same system exists for cortisol, however stress can cause the nervous system to override it, allowing the adrenal glands to continually pump cortisol into the bloodstream.

Once the nervous system overrides the automatic “off” switch for hormone production, it puts us in a position to be chronically overproducing cortisol. Some of the long term impacts of chronic cortisol production include:

·      Over-stimulation of the sympathetic nervous (the system involved in our fight or flight response) reduces our ability to digest food properly. While you still may be eating healthy or nutritious foods, your ability of absorb the nutrients from these foods is greatly reduced.

·      Stress kills off the bacteria that live in your gut and are required for the production of key neurotransmitters and hormones, like serotonin. This can increase our chances of experiencing depression and anxiety.

·      Cortisol causes the body to breakdown muscle tissue for the use of amino acids as an energy source 

·      Breakdown of the immune system – leaving us more prone to illness

·      Disruption of thyroid hormone production and function. This causes our metabolism to slow down and leaves us more prone to weight gain that can be harder to reverse.

Every stress we face competes for recovery time. To be able to best recover, we must be able to engage our “rest and digest” parasympathetic nervous system. When engaged, our parasympathetic nervous system allows our body is able to properly digest our food and repair any damaged tissues in the body. It gives our immune system time to recover and allows our liver to complete its 5,000 different tasks – including converting thyroid hormone into its active form.

Understanding the number of stresses you experience daily and the impact of your overall physiological load (overall stressors) is the first step towards breaking free from constant stress and creating a more balanced lifestyle. When we understand where our stress levels are truly sitting, we can make more informed decisions around the types of foods we eat, our sleeping patterns and even how intense our exercise session will be.