Let's Talk About Stress
Jan 09, 2022
When hearing the word stress, many people may perceive their stress levels to be low and have no awareness of its presence, but their body’s may be telling a different story on how stress is interpreted. This can be due to stress being more of a physiological measure of events in the body (not digestive food leading to loose stools, high blood pressure, brain fog) as oppose to a subjective feeling (mentally not perceiving a daily or life stressor).
In life we experience major life stressors and daily stressors. Major life stressors include job loss, divorce, death of a loved one, moving, or a major injury or illness. Daily stressors can be over-exercising, exposure to environmental chemicals and toxic metals, a chronic infection, excess alcohol intake, smoking, excess worry, anger or fear, etc.
We live in a world now where it’s become the norm to be going 24/7 even when our bodies cannot keep up to the daily demands of a fast pace life. We may not be aware of our daily stressors, however, overtime these daily stressors can become chronic and may contribute to more long-term biological consequences on the body.
HOW THE BODY INTERPRETS STRESS
Let’s get nerdy and get into the science of how our body initiates our stress response (“fight or flight response”).
If we think evolutionarily, our activated “fight or flight” response in the brain helped us stay alive. When perceiving the threat of a saber tooth tiger our body's provide us with the necessary tools to fight the threat and out run it (hence flight).
Responses that occur in the body when our “fight or flight” response is activated:
· Lungs increase breathing rate, with short shallow breathing, to intake more oxygen
· Muscles tense
· Sweating to cool down the body
· Liver converts glycogen to glucose, to support the high energy demand
· Stomach slows digestion, as blood flow moves away from the stomach to larger muscle groups to flight/run
· Heart rate and blood pressure increases, with the heart pumping harder, muscles and organs get nourished to run away from the perceived threat
· Brain releases hormones to create the HPA axis (learn more below!)
The hypothalamus in the brain releases the corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), this hormone then travels down to the anterior pituitary gland (at the base on the skull) which releases the adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH). The ACTH hormone then leaves the brain through the blood stream to act on your adrenal glands (that sit on top of the kidneys), to release cortisol, your stress hormone. Cortisol then acts upon almost every tissue in the body (i.e. intestinal lining in the gut, lymph glands as part of the immune system). This hormonal pathway within the body between the hypothalamus, pituitary gland and adrenal glands is called the HPA axis.
The threat’s we experience in everyday life today are not a saber tooth tiger, but various daily stressors as mentioned earlier (our thoughts, expectations, workload). It is no longer advantageous to fight or run away from these daily stressors, but we end up experiencing ongoing symptoms in the body as if we are constantly running away from a saber tooth tiger.
We start noticing symptoms arising like lack of sleep, heart palpitations, shallow breathing, excess sweating and shakiness, low blood sugar, digestive issues (constipation or loose stools), lack of appetite, difficulty concentrating or focusing, ineffective listening skills, anxiety and more.
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