It’s been quite the start to the year, and for many it has been extremely stressful for a variety of reasons so it seems timely to discuss Stress and how some simple tips may help during stressful times .
Stress itself is not necessarily the issue
Stress is not the enemy we are led to believe.
Rather, it is your ability to adapt to the stress that determines how much of a toll it takes on your health. Here are some of our recommended ways to increase stress resilience and decrease the impact that stress has on your health.
What does stress do to the body?
To understand how to address the impacts of stress on our body, it helps to
have an understanding of what happens to our brain and body in the face of stress.
The stress from a traumatic event activates your sympathetic nervous system or our ‘alert system’.
This starts the ‘stress response’ and floods your brain with hormones like cortisol and adrenaline to enable us to ‘fight or flee’. These hormones also deactivate our pre-frontal cortex (PFC). The PFC is our rational, thinking brain. The deactivation of this is why we are often emotional, irrational and can ‘snap’ or be quick to rage when we are stressed out. Staying in this stress response for too long will impact the physiology of the body too. It will increase heart rate, negatively influence breathing, decrease immunity, increase inflammation and put un-needed pressure on the cardiovascular system. Muscles close to your spine and skull turn off too-so your brain has trouble knowing what is going on in and around your body.
How can we increase our resilience to stress?
Chiropractic Adjustments
Aside from being a safe and healing touch, chiropractic adjustments activate the small muscles close to the spine and the skull (those same ones that stress turns off). This helps your brain to know what is going on in your body and in the world around you. Chiropractic adjustments also change the processing in the pre-frontal cortex(which is switched off in stressful times). This means we can think more clearly and rationally. Chiropractic adjustments are also linked to the calming and healing nervous system (the parasympathetic nervous system). This maybe why so many people report they feel well, relax easier and cope better with stress when under regular chiropractic care.
Exercise
Exercise helps to pump out the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline, limiting their longterm effects on the brain and body.Even a small walk each day is effective at doing this and clearing these hormones from your bloodstream.
Breathe
The breath is one of the simplest and most readily available tools to regulate your stress response. Breathing through your nose activates the parasympathetic nervous system(the calming and healing one),whereas breathing through your mouth activates more of the sympathetic stress response. Try incorporating the 4-7-8breath technique (below) in times of stress and before bed if you find you’re having trouble sleeping.
Nutritional Support
Eating healthy, natural foods is important. Your body is already stressed, so it does not need the extra burden from overly processed or unhealthy foods.
For extra stress support, try adding a daily dose of magnesium and/or colloidal minerals which are important for the nervous system and deficient in our soils. Some people find adaptogenic herbs to be helpful in regulating stress hormones and promoting feelings of relaxation and calm- especially if you’re having trouble sleeping.
FOUR – SEVEN – EIGHT BREATHING
Your breath is one of the most accessible tools for regulating your stress response. 4-7-8 breathing directly impacts the vagus nerve which is a direct link to activating your parasympathetic response (the rest | digest | calm part of your nervous system).
HOLD for 7 seconds
EXHALE for 8 seconds