The Stress
Welcome to my first blog post!
I have decided to start with, in my opinion, the most important topic when it comes to your health and wellbeing; Stress.
Like most of us, I've spent my fair share of time in a stressed out state - trying to juggle work with family, kids and all the other things life throws at you. It's easy to feel overwhelmed and find yourself frazzled mentally and physically.
What I'm learning from this, is that a holistic approach to your health is the best way to deal with stress effectively & realising that there is not just one magic bullet that will make it all better!
Once we understand what stress is and how it effects our health & wellbeing, we can then start looking at our current habits and build new healthier ones - out with the old and in with the new...
First of all, what is stress?
Stress is your body’s response to a threat or danger, this can be real or perceived – your nervous system isn’t very good at distinguishing between the two! When you sense a danger, a series of processes are activated, these are known as ‘fight or flight’ or ‘stress’ responses.
In a stress response, your nervous system releases stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol; these are to prime your body to take action.
These responses evolved to help us get away from dangers like lions and tigers, nowadays the stress response can be triggered by a huge variety of things which don’t pose a threat to our lives…
Every time you hear your phone ping with a text or notification, when you’re stuck in traffic, when you’ve had a disagreement with someone at work, watching the news @ 10 before you go to bed, feeling insecure about your appearance, whenever you feel that you’ve just got too much on your plate – your body reacts with the stress response.
A little bit of stress is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s there to help keep us safe. It’s the daily drip – drip of things like text messages and other results of modern day living that help tip us into a chronic stress state. One of my friends has ditched her smartphone and gone back to an analog to get away from the constant alerts!
Chronic stress is harmful to almost every system in our body, it suppresses your immune system, causes chaos with digestion, affects libido, can contribute to conditions like Fibromyalgia, Eczema, Asthma putting on weight, increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes and can lead to depression and mental illness. In Women, chronic stress can play absolute havoc with hormonal balance.
Being Chronically stressed is really not great...
The good news is there's lots of simple, easy and effective steps you can take to help you deal with stress;
Nutrition, sleep, exercise, relaxation, gut health, mind-set as well as setting your personal boundaries are all key ingredients in managing stress in a healthy way.
Over the next couple of weeks we’ll look at the big rocks to move in order to reduce your stress levels.
See you all soon
Nina xx