Stress and Longevity
The ‘S Word’ has gotten a lot of flak, especially in western culture. And rightfully so, we Westerners generally have zero idea how to truly live a balanced life. The ‘work hard, play hard’ and ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’ mindset hasn't helped us live a life of longevity, but rather burnout.. In fact, I do not remember the last consult I had where the person sitting across from me hadn’t used some variation of the word “stress” to describe to me their everyday life. We are all stressed out.
So What Exactly is Stress?
Our Adrenals produce Cortisol, our stress hormone. Also known as the ‘fight or flight hormone’. Back in the day cortisol helped us survive by giving us the energy to run away or fight off predators. Today, cortisol is still triggered when we are under stress. However instead of this threat being of the wild animal variety, today’s stress responses are due to things like:
School exams
Work deadlines
Family or social gatherings due to social anxiety
Or even daily activities like the stress of one's work commute
Cortisol in many ways is kind of like the survivalist of our hormones that simply put, is being triggered far too frequently. Increased cortisol production does a few things:
It can cause GI symptoms due to blood being shunted away from the GI tract
It can lead to other hormone deficiencies, such as a progesterone deficiency
It elevates your blood glucose
Lowers your metabolism
And impairs your immune function
Managing Your Controllables to Manage Your Stress
So what can we do? After all we all know me telling you to calm down isn’t going to help anything (hot tip for you gents). The trick here is to learn how to manage these responses. Luckily the health and wellness industry has really picked up speed in the last few years to help you along your way.
An influx in self care practices like mediation, breathing practices, sound baths, journaling, gardening, and other self- soothing activities are booming and are all great ways to ground yourself. Make sure whatever activity you decide to use is truly manageable with your schedule and lifestyle. After all, stressing out about making it to your 5:30pm yoga class in time isn’t doing you any favors. Finding out what works best for you and adjusting when necessary is key.
While we explore our new guided meditations we can also use the checklist below to make sure that we are cleansing ourselves of any additional controllable stressors. Limiting or removing what isn’t serving us, and adding a few things in to help where we can.
