Chronic Stress and Why You Need to Listen to Your 4 Doctors
Stress: Why We Need to Listen to the Doctors
Today, more than ever, western societies health overall and individual health has become one of the largest discussed topics in. Chronic disease has taken over our health clinics and hospitals accounting for nearly 60% of all deaths. However, our medical system still is awful at treating chronic issues and tends to only treat the acute symptoms and deal with the issues later.
Below is a list of the common perils of modern living. Take note of how many of the following ailments, symptoms, or pains you’ve experienced in your life:
Chronic neck/shoulder/back pains
Digestion problems such as gas or indigestion
General fatigue
Depression, anxiety and mood swings
Weight gain
Frequent bouts with the flu or colds
Decreased sex drive
Constipation
I'm guessing most people reading this article can relate to 2 or 3 of these, I know I can. Our current system tends to not look holistically at the body looking at compartmentalized systems in the body, when in truth, the body is an interconnected, continuously changing group of systems that react to one another with acute and chronic changes. Enter The 4 Doctors, which specialize in teaching awareness of the hormonal, musculo-skeletal, nervous, and digestive/elimination systems and how they relate to each other.
The one thing that all of these systems DO have in common is stress. Rather, the body and it’s systems do not differentiate between mental stress from a work deadline, physical stress from a HIIT workout, or chemical stress from processed foods. Stress summates and the total amount of stress has an overall effect on our entire body.
There are 6 types of stress: physical, chemical, electromagnetic, psychic nutritional, and thermal, which all are “dumped” into a funnel which the body senses as “stress”. See the figure below from Paul Chek, showing how all stress summates and when the stress levels get too high it can ultimately lead to death. No Bueno friends.
However, not all stress is bad, notice how there are green and red arrows leading to the funnel. Examples of good hormetic stressors, that stress our body enough to create some awesome changes are mild sunlight exposure, a workout, fasting, sauna. BUT, its all about the dosage of these stressors and the context. For example, your boss harping on you to finish a project on time might be enough stress to get the blood flowing and create amazing results in your professional life. Too much yelling and threatening from the same boss could cause severe anxiety and cause you to get less sleep, overeat, etc. You get the point.
When our stress levels get too high, our body can chronically be put into a “fight or flight” mode, activating the sympathetic division of our autonomic nervous system that is responsible for ramping up stress hormones such as cortisol and increasing cardiac output, and stopping digestion.
Acutely, this is a massive survival advantage. When we needed to escape from immediate danger such as a saber-tooth tiger, the increased output from our body was needed to get to safety. Great and functional. However, in our modern lives, we tend to be stuck in a chronic state of “fight or flight”, causing a myriad of symptoms and effects, some of which are listed below:
Radical energy swings, as blood sugar levels change
Progressively reduced energy levels in long term
Weight gain and fat gain in midsection in response to blood sugar fluctuations and hormonal stress
Low self esteem due to weight/body issues
Gas and acid reflux issues, digestion issues
Chronic constipation
Strong, smelly, body odor
Elevated blood pressure and heart disease, TG
Weakened immune system
The constant overproduction of stress hormones can lead to adrenal fatigue which can cause a number of the following issues
Low energy
Poor recovery
Diminished sex drive
Accelerated aging
Difficulty concentrating
Sound like you???? Don’t worry, most of us are undernourished, overeating, under-rested, working out too much or too little, and over stressed mentally, summating into a big ole’ load of stress hormones being dumped into our body, pushing us further into the cycle
BUT FEAR NOT!!!!! YOUR 4 DOCTORS ARE HERE TO SAVE THE DAY!!!!
By creating a relationship with Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, Dr. Happiness, and Dr. Movement, you can learn to become aware of the symptoms and signs of too much stress and learn the steps needed to decrease it. In the next upcoming posts, I will specifically highlight each of the doctors and how you can become more in touch with them and more aware of the stress that is being placed the systems of your body.
Keep your eyes peeled fam!
Hope you enjoyed this post and thanks for reading!!