Let’s Talk About STRESS bay-bee!

Lets talk about YOU and ME! (please tell me you get the song reference?)

What would modern life be like without tons of stress? Sure we are no longer running from saber tooth tigers, but we have loads of chronic low level stressors today from our richly scheduled lives.

These low level, chronic stressors are causing us to live in a constant state of hyper vigilance, over stimulation and inflammation. Not to stress you out, but stress causes us to become sick, inflamed and unhappy. 

Yes, most of us are stressed but I see more and more people who who are actually addicted to stress – yes, some of us actually get a buzz from stress. Are you one of them? Check this to find out.

So what is going on and why are we so stressed?

Our culture is one that thrives on stress and we reward each other for stress inducing activities. Everyone I know is super busy! It’s hard to not be busy when you are a single parent or have a 2 career family or kids who have multiple after school activities. Not only do these situational experiences add stress to our lives but the way we choose to soothe ourselves is creating even more stress. When we drink coffee or eat processed carbs, have a glass of wine or reach for a bowl of ice cream we are piling more stress onto our already stressed bodies. 

Stress and hormones 

There are a lot of hormones in your body but cortisol, leptin, insulin and glucagon influence all body systems. They behave like a team in your body and if they get out of balance, things get ugly. When our day to day diet includes excess sugar and carbohydrate, too much stress and not enough recovery we can get sick. Recovery and restorative practices help us cool down our inflammation and switch off our stress by engaging our parasympathetic nervous system which restores our hormonal balance. The way of sleep, our mindset, good nutrition and restorative activities all help us stay healthy and balanced and avoid hormonal imbalances like diabetes, thyroid disease, growth disorders, and adrenal fatigue or HPA Axis Dysfunction.

If you want more details of how hormones affect our health, I highly recommend you check out Chapter 5 Healthy Hormones: Healthy You in It Starts With Food to learn more.

The good news is that doing a Whole30 reduces inflammation and balances your hormones!  

This is one of the best parts about Whole30 in my opinion. Removing sugars and refined carbs even for 30 days can balance your blood sugar, your cortisol and your hunger and fullness signals and return you to that place of equilibrium.

And more good news! There is a lot we can do to reduce our stress even if we can’t avoid it.

It starts with a general awareness that the stressful situation is happening and simply being able to notice that you are in a state of stress allows you to shift your perception of what is happening. You become separate from the stressful situation instead of fused with it.

Then you can take action!

Once you are aware that you are feeling stressed, you can do something about it. Go for a walk, do some gentle movement like yoga or tai chi, take a break, get to bed earlier, have a lie down, step away from the screens, spend some time in nature. But if you feel like you need to go deeper to reduce your relationship with stress there are some very helpful actions in this article.

I love hearing results from clients that doing a Whole30 made them feel more balanced and with improved sleep and energy they are able to put more restorative practices in place to maintain that good equilibrium in their everyday lives. 

 

 

 

 

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