Stress
To understand your body's natural stress response, you need to first understand the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous systems. When you are in a state of stress your sympathetic nervous system becomes activated. Hormones are produced in your brain and sent throughout your body telling your heart rate to increase. The muscles around your blood vessels constrict to allow the blood to move faster throughout your body. Your respiratory rate increases to maximize oxygen flow. Blood flow is increased to the brain and skeletal muscles. Bodily functions that are not essential to running away from the stressor or fighting away the stressor are shut off. This includes your digestive, reproductive, and urinary systems. All of those are temporarily cut off from major blood supply while the stressful event is occurring. These reactions are essential when you are faced in a life-threatening situation. Your body is preparing itself to meet the demands of a physically demanding event. After the stressful event is resolved, a hormone that was produced during the stress, cortisol, creates a craving for high-calorie, fatty foods. If you were running from a bear or fighting off a dangerous threat you would have burned up lots of body fat. That is why after stress, you want to eat those greasy, fatty, or sweet foods (you need to replenish the stored energy you burned off). Once the perceived stress is gone, your parasympathetic nervous system becomes activated. Your heart and respiratory rate returns to their normal resting rates. Your stomach resumes digestion, and your blood vessels relax. The relationship between these two nervous systems is very healthy, and it goes back to the start of human existence.
Hunters and gatherers would undergo a period where accessing their sympathetic nervous system allowed them to hunt down their dinners or outrun a threatening animal. The issue at that time was that stress was a physical cause. Today, in modern society, people get stressed over non-threatening things such as technology, work, traffic, finances, lack of sleep, relationships, even conversations (e-mails or texts too). Your body still undergoes the sympathetic nervous system reaction of fight-or-flight. If you are exposing yourself to a constant level of worry and stress, it is a condition called chronic stress. Chronic stress is linked to chronic diseases such as high blood pressure (hypertension), cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and others. While acute stress actually enhances our immune system in a situation in which we need to battle an infection while running for our lives, chronic stress impairs our immune system (leaving us more vulnerable to disease). However, removing all of the stress in your life is stressful in itself, and probably impossible. Humans are designed to undergo periods of acute stress then recovery, but in today's society we are forgetting to recover. We are forgetting to let those bothersome thoughts go and relax and be at peace with ourselves and the world even for just a few moments a day. So, if we want to live and thrive in today's stressful, world what can we do?
Kelly McGonagle puts this idea of making stress our friend into a possibility that perhaps was never imagined to many of us before. Please take 15 minutes to change your stressful life, with this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU IT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE! If you feel chronically stressed that is.
After watching that video in class, these were the notes I took in class:
Hunters and gatherers would undergo a period where accessing their sympathetic nervous system allowed them to hunt down their dinners or outrun a threatening animal. The issue at that time was that stress was a physical cause. Today, in modern society, people get stressed over non-threatening things such as technology, work, traffic, finances, lack of sleep, relationships, even conversations (e-mails or texts too). Your body still undergoes the sympathetic nervous system reaction of fight-or-flight. If you are exposing yourself to a constant level of worry and stress, it is a condition called chronic stress. Chronic stress is linked to chronic diseases such as high blood pressure (hypertension), cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and others. While acute stress actually enhances our immune system in a situation in which we need to battle an infection while running for our lives, chronic stress impairs our immune system (leaving us more vulnerable to disease). However, removing all of the stress in your life is stressful in itself, and probably impossible. Humans are designed to undergo periods of acute stress then recovery, but in today's society we are forgetting to recover. We are forgetting to let those bothersome thoughts go and relax and be at peace with ourselves and the world even for just a few moments a day. So, if we want to live and thrive in today's stressful, world what can we do?
Kelly McGonagle puts this idea of making stress our friend into a possibility that perhaps was never imagined to many of us before. Please take 15 minutes to change your stressful life, with this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU IT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE! If you feel chronically stressed that is.
After watching that video in class, these were the notes I took in class:
I would not try to eliminate all of the stress in your life, but instead, I would try and change your perception on stress and how you react to a stressful situation. Can you write your thoughts down, console a close friend or family member, help someone else get through their stressful time? Maybe you can make stress your friend and challenge your body physically. Go on a hike, or go to a gym, better yet do those things with friends! Do not forget to give yourself recovery time! You want to always re-engage your parasympathetic nervous system and relax after a challenge. Maybe do some meditation or go to a cafe after that big workout class at the gym. Find what works for you and make your stress response healthier.