Weekly Wellness Note #4 - STRESS (Part 1)

Sorry for missing last week's note, it's been a busy week. So as I was studying for my finals week in Chiropractic school, it hit me what the topic of this week's note would be.

S-T-R-E-S-S

Of course everyone knows about stress. From a student perspective you have the stress of school, paying bills, taking loans, girlfriends, boyfriends, exams, image, fast food, etc. And as a society, divorce rates are high, terrorism, bills, taxes, work, traffic. Day to day, your body is under a lot of mini-stressors. Am I right or am I right?

Stress is a response run by the sympathetic nervous system. The system was designed to help our anscestors amp their bodies up to confront (fight) or run away (flight) from a dangerous situation. It's also responsible for those stories about grandma lifting a car to save a child or how an athlete can increase their performance under pressure.

But you're not running away from a sabretooth tiger, saving babies from cars, or playing in game 7 of the world series on a daily basis are you? Of course not, but the same physiology that occurs in a fight with a tiger is what's happening in your bodies as you worry about your bills or your boyfriend on a daily basis. This is CHRONIC STRESS.

The chronic stress that your body is under everyday is the biggest contributor to the diseases that we face in our lives in this age. Here's how in science and regular terminology:

- Increased heart rate and blood pressure
- Stress turns off LDL ("bad cholesterol") receptors, resulting in more LDL in the blood. Decreases HDL (Good cholesterol) aka - Heart Disease
- Stress increases adrenaline levels in the blood leading to more free radicals placed into the blood stream. aka - Free Radicals destory cells and DNA
- Stress raises blood glucose levels aka - Insulin resistance and diabetes
- Stress increases sensation of pain
- Stress hormones decrease short term memory and rational thought
- Stress hormones increase glucose and fat storage in the belly. aka Obesity
- Stress shuts down cell mediated immunity. aka - Increase chances of infection. Decreased response to tissue damage and cancer growth
- Sympathetic nervous system uses up serotonin precursors. aka - Not enough serotonin for brain leading to depression and sleep disorders

And I promise you, these are all normal responses to stress. When you're avoiding danger, you WANT these things to happen. This is your body's ultimate survival mechanism.

The problem is when you're living your daily lives outside of survival, but your environment is placing these stressors on your body. You always want your body to have an appropriate response to your environment. Therefore when you have an inappropriate response to your environment, disease is the result.

So it is critical that we all regain control of our body's response to stress, and I will show you some ways how with diet, lifestyle, and of course, quality chiropractic care.

Until the next issue...