When was the last time you experienced stress? That’s a rhetorical question because we all experience it every single day. It’s actually a normal part of life, believe it or not. The better question is, when’s the last time you actually felt your stress? When was the last time that your stress meter got a little too high? Perhaps it was last week when you looked at your finances, or maybe yesterday when you had to go out for supplies, or today while working from home and homeschooling your children. There are a number of things that can lead to stress overload and when stress goes unmanaged we can get overloaded quickly.
Every year, April marks Stress Awareness Month, and it couldn’t have come with better timing this year. With the current pandemic and uncertainty that it is bringing, many of us are experiencing extra stress. Many are working in new environments trying to figure out how to work from home, others are putting their teaching skills to the test and trying to get their children to sit down and learn algebra, and some are worried about finances because their business closed or they were laid off. It’s safe to say stress levels are high.
Stress is an interesting topic. It’s a built-in survival mechanism but too much of it can harm your health. You’ve likely heard of the fight-or-flight response. It references a time when our very ancient ancestors were in the face of danger. They had a choice, they could either fight or run. It’s not so easy nowadays. When we look at stress, it’s much more than fighting or fleeing and it has to do with your acute stress response, which is the physiological reaction to a terrifying event. We are not talking about walking through a “haunted house” on Halloween, either. This can be physically terrifying or mentally terrifying, meaning you feel physically threatened in some way or afraid of or worried about something.
When your acute stress response is triggered your body instantly releases hormones that tell your body “get ready to act, there’s a threat.” These hormones trigger your sympathetic nervous system which stimulates your adrenal glands which then triggers your body to release catecholamines like adrenaline and a few other hormones. The result? A quickened heart rate, a spike in blood pressure, rapid breathing, tense muscles, maybe a little bit of sweating and that feeling of butterflies in your stomach. You know how it feels.
If we were to experience this response every once in a while, it would work as it should and be a good thing. The problem is, we are experiencing this response way too often, and for most people, daily. Which, of course, causes stress overload and our stress meter to go through the roof. It’s this chronic stress that tends to impact our health, especially in the gut.
Your gut and brain are directly connected by something called the Gut-Brain Axis. As a matter of fact, the two are “hardwired” together by the vagus nerve, connected by the enteric nervous system (ENS), connected by some 500 million neurons, and connected biochemically by more than 30 various neurotransmitters, some of which are produced by certain species of the gut microflora.
The vagus nerve connects the gut and brain and allows them to “communicate” with one another. Signals can be sent via the vagus nerve in either direction—from the gut to the brain, or from the brain to the gut. Research is showing that chronic stress can inhibit the signals sent via the vagus nerve and may ultimately cause gastrointestinal issues.
Not only does chronic stress affect this important communication pathway but it also has an effect on gut permeability due to corticotropin releasing factors (CFR), peptides that help coordinate your body’s stress response. CFRs actually increase gut permeability. This increase in permeability has the chance of allowing substances to pass through the gut barrier and get into the bloodstream and is commonly referred to as leaky gut. The truth is, we all have leaky gut to an extent. The issues arise when too many and the wrong substances are able to pass through the barrier. After all, when this happens, there are particles in the blood that shouldn’t be there. As you can imagine this could become an underlying issue that results in a host of other health concerns.
The bottom line, chronic stress has a way of wreaking havoc on our gut and wellbeing. The good news, it’s completely manageable with simple techniques like meditation, yoga, exercise, deep breathing and more!
Live the #NewEarthLife
Stress, it's a part of our daily lives and it has a way of building up fast without us noticing, especially with the added uncertainty we are facing today. Taking a few minutes each day to destress, it's what we call living the #NewEarthLife! Your gut, your mind, and your body will thank you.