Control Stress!
There are just too many external sources of stress in today’s world. External sources are those that you may not have created, or are simply circumstances, but affect you nevertheless; work, traffic, school, relationships, war, the economy, etc. If you can correct, reduce or remove these sources in your life, great. However, for the ones that we cannot remove, we must find ways to positively affect our lives and reduce the total stress. We have to address the things that we can control. We must recognize them, acknowledge them, and find ways to reduce their impact. Let’s review how we can affect our internal sources of stress; things that happen inside our bodies as a result of external stress. I want to “stress” the circle of how biological stress becomes emotional stress, and that emotional stress can become biological stress. They both feed each other, and only we can choose to control it.We have all heard this before; eat right, get the rest you need, and exercise. Nothing new here, right?! Let’s look at each of these a little closer, and see the “how”, the “why”, and “what” to do about it.
For as much as we know we should eat better for overall health. How does our diet affect our stress level? For starters, we live in Miami, and contrary to popular belief, coffee is not an essential nutrient. Neither are energy drinks, or anything with caffeine, and/or loads of sugar in them. These drinks stress already overworked organs that try to control sugar metabolism, our pancreas, and pump out our stress hormones themselves, our adrenal glands. Since the introduction of the “energy drink”, emergency rooms have seen quite a jump in related visits for chest pains, and palpitations. I’d say that is stressful, and in a physiological as well as emotional sense of the word. These drinks contain obscene amounts of both caffeine and sugar; stimulants. So, if the stress in your life is not enough to give you chest pain, certainly these types of beverages are. In turn, having palpitations or chest pain caused by your dietary choices will certainly add to real emotional stress.
You would have to be asleep for the last five years if you were not aware that diabetes is on a severe upswing, and affecting children at younger ages. Our country is obsessed with refined carbohydrates. We are a fat, unhealthy country. What about stress here? There seems to be plenty of science linking abnormally high levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, with increased weight gain, and increased difficulty losing the weight. AND, if that was not enough, as you gain weight, your levels of insulin, made by your pancreas while working overtime, swing wildly because of all those refined carbs and sugars we ingested, other hormones can be affected; like estrogen. This in turn can affect female cycles. Any carb-craving, overweight ladies with difficult cycles, and issues with decreased sex drive out there? They are breaking down my door to find out what is going wrong, and how to help themselves. Over time, these women unfortunately are on a range of meds for weight, depression, and hormone therapy, which includes estrogen, progesterone, and thyroid hormone therapy.
Men, you don’t get away free either. Increased weight, and carb-craving, over time will affect your sex hormone levels and sex drive. I know everyone is listening now. Is loss of sex drive stressful?! No need to answer that one. So, let’s get rid of the sugar, and all the refined carb foods. These are foods with high glycemic index chart. In simple terms, glycemic value rates how quickly a food converts to sugar. A good start would be to find a glycemic value chart, and eat the foods that are lower on the chart. These are the foods that “burn” more steadily, more slowly.
The main thing to remember, is that you don’t have to be feeling chest pains, or lose your drive before you know that something just does not feel right. A big problem is that when we are stressed out, we don’t slow down enough to pay attention to our bodies, and listen for its signals. Pay attention to small changes; decreased energy, weakness, headaches, poor sleep, anxiety, depression.
What about rest? Too many of us probably said to ourselves “what’s that?”
Over time, and that is not “overtime”, but over the course of time, too little sleep, or restless or interrupted sleep, will take its toll on your stress levels during waking hours. In the last couple of years, we have all seen a tremendous increase in advertising for sleep medications. If you want to find where the high traffic areas are, find a McDonald’s. If you want to know what the top diseases or conditions that Americans suffer from, just watch television commercials. Sleep problems are a hot topic. If sleep is a problem for you, you need to stop all caffeine drinks, even your morning coffee. If you got the rest you needed, you would not need the coffee. I know it can taste good, but if you have to choose between sleep or coffee, your health should win. But it is up to you. Also, stopping coffee may give you 2-4 days of headaches until you body calms down, and cleans out a bit.
Something that is tied to proper nutrition and good sleep, is meeting your food needs through the entire day. In other words, you need to maintain fuel (your blood sugar) at a healthy level, feeding your body throughout the day. If you ate dinner at 6pm, went to bed at midnight, and woke up at 3am consistently, maybe it is because your blood sugar dropped uncomfortably because too much time went by without some food (six hours). Get to sleep earlier, and have a small portion of a light protein in the early evening, like a few bites of a turkey sandwich. I said “a few bites”, maybe half a sandwich, or maybe just roll up a slice or two of turkey alone. Protein breaks down a bit slower than carbs and should carry you through the night.
Clear your mind when getting ready for bed. Poor sleep patterns will be affected by cortisol, but we also need it to kick-start us out of bed in the morning. Now, listen to this: poor sleep can be another factor in weight gain because it affects cortisol levels, and high cortisol levels can make it difficult to lose weight. In other words, prolonged stress can add to weight problems. Everything is interdependent. All parts and systems of your body can affect all the other parts. Incredible, but scary, if we don’t take care of ourselves.
Before we go into exercise, a word about breathing… when we are stressed out or depressed, our breathing patterns may change; postural changes consistent with stress or depression (slouching forward, or slouching toward your computer), reduces lung expansion, which reduces our ability to take deeper breaths. The more stressed out we are, the worse we breathe, until finally, some very stressed out people get panic attacks, during which, they cannot breathe. For this reason, meditation, and yoga that combines awareness of the breath, is especially powerful in addressing health and stress through our breathing. Exercise that makes you breath rhythmically, aerobic exercise, does exactly this.
And now for exercise. Who has the time? Who needs the stress of making time for exercise?! Hey, I am not serious. You have to make the time. Exercise has absolutely profound effects. It changes our metabolism, helps us sleep better, breathe better, and yes, positively affects our hormones and sex drive. The best part is that you don’t have to be an athlete to see life-changing results. Simply walking, but working at it. If you can mix it up, with some cross training, weight-training to tone up, all the better. Your body, once you get past the pain of doing something new, actually wants to be worked out. As you see changes in muscle tone, and your breathing becomes easier, you will sleep better, you will reduce your stress, you will increase your energy throughout your day.
Soooo, let’s review. Eat right, sleep right, and exercise. If you eat right, it will help you sleep right and support your exercise. A good multi-vitamin, multi-mineral always helps, but it is more important during times of increased stress, as your nutritional needs are increased. To reduce stress in your life, reduce or remove sugar and caffeine drinks, eat regularly through the day, three meals with healthy snacks; get the rest that you need; make time for exercise that will in turn help you sleep better, give you a better appetite, and increase your energy; and all of this will help you control your stress!!!