I have been banging on about the dangers of chronic stress for quite a few years, as nearly every person I see in my practice has stress as an underlying factor in their illness and dis-ease. But it’s not just the nervous system that is affected, nearly every other bodily system is negatively affected by long-term stress. Stress is considered a contributing factor in approximately 80% of chronic disease.
Stress not only affects how we feel and how we are able to cope, it can have detriment affects on many of our major bodily systems. Obviously treating stress can make a significant different to whether or not these life-threatening conditions do manifest. Let’s find out how stress affects us…
Heart & Cardiovascular Health
Stress can create altered heart rhythms. Long-term stress has been proven to been associated with increasing the risks of many heart disease. Conditions such as high blood pressure, increased blood cholesterol and blood sugar. Stress hormones such as cortisol are also abnormally high in the blood stream. 2
Pancreatic Health & Diabetes
As indicated above, the implications of long-term stress in the blood stream is high blood sugar – known as hyperglycaemia. The long-term effect of this can lead to chronic disease such as diabetes and in the long-term contributes to premature death. 3
Mental Health
Stress affects our memory, learning and the ability and speed of mental processing.4 Our sleep can also be negatively affected by worrying thoughts and strees and anxiety.
How does stress affect our gut and does it contribute to weight gain?
Stress can create mayhem with the internal workings of the gastrointestinal (GIT) function by altering our gut acidity, making it less conducive to health gut flora/microbiome.
Stress detrimentally affects gut motility as the movement of food (or the contents of the gut) significantly slows down when stressed.4 This can be a precursor to other more serious gut conditions conditions such as irritable bowel disease (IBD), leaky gut and also leads to weight gain. Unhealthy eating habits often go hand-in hand with stress.
Reproductive Health
Our reproductive cycle can also be disrupted by stress, particularly long-term stress. It leads to irregular cycles, missed ovulation and sperm health.
How do we prevent stress affecting our bodily systems?
Reducing stress in our body and mind should be one of the top priorities for anyone suffering from ill health.
Understanding how stress affects our bodily systems is the first step to reducing stress, as we can then understand how our body works and bring those systems back into balance. Here’s three things to start with to change the way your body responds to stress:
- breathing techniques;
- changing simple regular routines; and
- getting out in nature
Gut health is another one of those things that all naturopaths learn in first year of studies – treat the gut and you will help bring about balance in a lot of the other bodily systems. A pre and probiotic can be beneficial, but it’s important to initially establish that your gut is absorbing nutrients. Creating a healthy internal environment for absorbing nutrients and processing food is important. It has been pleasing to see that modern medicine is also starting to come around to this way of thinking: pre and pro-biotics being prescribed by many doctors these days.
However, harping back to my original point, stress is an insidious disease that affects nearly all our bodily systems, which is why I’m determined to help as many people as possible to reduce the stress response in their body. This month I will be running the online program for four weeks to Reboot your Stress Response. If you want to know how to easily incorporate stress reduction techniques into your life, then this is highly recommended.
As a bonus, one of the newest ways to create relaxation and stress relief is a live sound healing session at the end of each weekly event. This not only supports your physical relaxation but includes techniques that are designed to calm and reset your mental and emotional state
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