subject: Stress from A-Z [print this page] We have all been stressed and have heard from many sources that stress is bad for us, nothing new there. But do we actually know or understand the rippling effect stress has on our bodies? I am going to hit the high points of what stress does to you mentally, emotionally, and physically. It is also important to understand that stress comes in three forms.
Mental/Emotional
Physical
Hidden Internal
Here is an example of what occurs with your body.
Lets say you over slept and you are running late for work. You rush out of the house and start driving to work only to realize you forgot there was construction on the very road you are on. This delays you by 20 minutes and now you are for sure going to be late to work. By the time you get to work you also notice that you left your lunch on the kitchen counter along with your nice big cup of coffee. You also have multiple deadlines during the day which is adding to your stress level. Lunch time rolls around and you need to find a quick snack so you eat from the vending machine. By the end of the day you are wiped out, hungry, stressed to the max, and highly irritable.
The above scenario is nothing new to any of us. It pinpoints mental and emotional stress. Mentally you are taxed from working eight hours and having to rush to work. Emotionally you are fatigued from rushing to work and balancing the days priorities. But what happens to our bodies during this process?
The minute you jumped out of bed realizing you are running late put your body into a fight or flight state. Your reaction to being late notified your body that you are under stress. This signaled your autonomic nervous system which then signaled your sympathetic nervous system branch to tell your hypothalamus to tell your pituitary gland to tell youradrenal glands to make both cortisol (your main stress hormone) and adrenaline (now called epinephrin and norepinephrin.) Your adrenal glands also make and store sex hormones, reparitive hormones, and are essential to life. The elevation in cortisol from this process also pushes more blood flow away from your digestive system, supresses growth and repair hormones (such as DHEA), increases blood pressure, and much more. Your body cannot ideintfy if you are simply running late for work or running for your life. It reacts the same way. It alsosuppressesyour immune system. Ever wonder why you get sick more when you are under constant stress? The longer your stress level is increased the harder your adrenal glands have to work. Picture all types of stress as little fires. Cortisol acts like firefighters, rushing around to put out those fires. The more fires and the longer they are burning the harder your adrenal glands need to work to put them out (firefighters). Eventually your adrenal glands become fatigued. Or your firefighters simply cannot work at such a high level for a long period of time and grow tried. Fatigued adrenal glands directly and indirectly influence your entire body through hormones. Once they become fatigued an imbalance becomes evident and will will push your body further to malfunction further. I will go deeper into adrenal fatigue in my next post.
Stress is not simply limited to being frustrated or having a bad day. Stress impacts your entire body.
