STRESS IN THE BODY

Stress is a physiological process - it's not just in your head.

Stress management is something we often talk about when working to support a healthy and happy life.
While we can never fully eliminate stress (it’s inevitable and sometimes important!), managing how we cope, and ensuring it doesn’t become overwhelming, can have lasting consequences on our health.

Stress isn’t just a feeling of overwhelm, it is also an important physiological process that our body goes through. This process deeply impacts a variety of areas related to our health and well-being.When we experience a stressful event and our body elicits a stress response, there are multiple different organs involved - along with hormones released - that contribute to real time changes in our blood pressure, blood sugar, hormones and neurotransmitters.

This process was developed in our bodies to help promote us into action when we were in dangerous situations - and for good reason! We need to spring into action when we are close to an accident or when something is threatening us.

Long-term we can see that chronic activation of stress impact our bodies via increased blood pressure, risk of cardiovascular events, weight gain, trouble sleeping, impaired digestion and more!

When we chat about stress with patients we often need to remind them of this! When we say we need to manage stress as part of your treatment plan, it’s not because it’s “all in your head”, it’s because stress is a real physiological event that impacts your whole body. It is not just having trouble managing your to-do list!

The good thing is there are things that we can do to support your body and mind through stressful times.

A few of our top recommendations:
Exercise
Sleeping well
Taking a break (if possible!) or taking stock of your weekly activities - we love our DNE exercise (draining, energizing, neutral) for this reflection (message us for the worksheet!)
Meditation and mindfulness

To get help implementing any of these practices book a complimentary meet and greet with one of our ND's here.