Let’s take ourselves back a few thousand years. Imagine that you’re out foraging in the woods at dusk, when you hear a noise coming from the depths of the forest. A flash of orange through the trees, a pair of amber eyes in the gloom. Something is watching you.
You stay still and listen. Your heart starts to beat faster, your breathing quickens, your pupils dilate, your muscles feel activated. You feel alert, alive and ready to run.
This is our ‘fight or flight’ mode; our body’s response to stress, perfectly adapted to help us in a real, life-threatening situation.
But what’s actually going on in the body when we feel stressed? When we experience stress, whether real or perceived, the hypothalamus in our brain sets off a cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters, which ultimately ends in the release of cortisol (one of our main stress hormones) and adrenaline from our adrenal glands.
These hormones give us the short-term boost we need to deal with a tiger in the woods – blood pumps to our muscles ready for action, our pupils dilate making our vision clearer, glucose is released into the bloodstream giving us energy to run away or fight. Other bodily systems, like our digestive, immune and reproductive systems, temporarily shut down – because now’s not the time to be digesting a meal, fighting a cold, or having babies.
Once the stress has gone, a negative feedback loop switches off this stress response, and our body should return to normal. (Until the next time we spot a tiger in the woods!)
At this point, it’s also worth mentioning what ‘stress’ is. Stress is not only psychological, but can be physical too. Think overexercise, lack of sleep, illness or infection, poor diet, excess caffeine, and toxic exposure – all of these can add to our stress load.
Now back to the modern world. Picture the scene. You wake up early to a beeping alarm clock, feeling exhausted. You immediately check your phone and see a load of notifications, including some work emails you need to deal with urgently. You make a strong coffee, skipping breakfast, and hot foot it to your HIIT class. You commute on a packed train (which is delayed!), standing up in someone’s armpit. Work is full on, and you’re rushing around all day, wolfing down lunch at your desk while responding to messages. In the evening you scroll on Instagram (terrible), check the news (even more terrible) and binge on a crime series on Netflix (lots of violence and shouting), before you crash into bed, still looking at your phone. Until tomorrow, when you do it all again!
Unfortunately for our health, many of us are being bombarded with stress from the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment we go to sleep. It might not be as life-threatening as a tiger, but this kind of low-level stress can have a real impact on our health and hormones.
So what happens when stress becomes chronic? As you may have guessed, we weren’t designed to be constantly exposed to stress. If this stress is sustained, our body’s stress response can become dysregulated, leading to too much, and then too little, cortisol.[1]
Some signs of high cortisol include:
- Disrupted sleep, especially waking up in the middle of the night
- High blood pressure
- Poor immunity
- Weight gain
- Anxiety / panic attacks
- Imbalanced blood sugar levels
- Hormone imbalances
And some signs of low cortisol:
- Fatigue / burnout
- Low mood / motivation
- Low libido
- Sleep issues
- Low blood pressure
- Feeling weak / fainting
- Poor memory and concentration
- Muscle weakness and joint pain
So how can we support stress?
Stress management doesn’t need to be time-consuming, complicated or mega expensive. Here are a few tips that I often share with my clients, to help them manage stress and bring a bit more calm and balance into their lives:
- Managing or reducing stressors in your life as far as you can. Set boundaries, ask for help and don’t be afraid to say no.
- Build in some kind of mindfulness practice that feels good to you. Maybe going to bed earlier to read your book, going for a walk in the park at lunchtime, or sitting outside in the garden with your morning cuppa.
- Try to get outside and expose yourself to natural light first thing in the morning, and reduce screen time at night, to help set your circadian rhythm (your body clock).
- Focus on eating three balanced meals a day with protein, lots of colourful veggies and some healthy fats. Reduce sugary snacks and stimulants like caffeine and alcohol if you’re feeling stressed.
- Magnesium supports a healthy nervous system, and may be beneficial in supporting stress and anxiety.[2] One of my absolute faves is Sweet Bee Organic’s Sweet Sleep Magnesium Butter, which can be used as part of a relaxing night time ritual.
If you’re struggling with sleep, low level anxiety or any of the symptoms above, get in touch for a free no-obligation call, and let’s see how I can help.
[1] Guilliams TG, Edwards L. Chronic stress and the HPA axis. The standard. 2010;9(2):1-2.
[2] Boyle NB, Lawton C, Dye L. The effects of magnesium supplementation on subjective anxiety and stress—a systematic review. Nutrients. 2017 May;9(5):429.
