Your Stress Could Be Killing You
Article Summary
Stress can have a powerful impact on both the mind and body, affecting muscles, the nervous system, and hormones. Often, the mind exaggerates minor problems, turning them into overwhelming sources of stress. When stress becomes chronic, it changes our brain chemistry, disrupting the balance of hormones like cortisol, serotonin, and beta-endorphins. These changes can lead to feelings of anxiety, depression, and a desire to isolate oneself from others. Functional medicine approaches stress holistically, focusing on how interconnected systems in the body, like the brain, gut, and hormones, are all affected by stress.
Stress also causes physical changes in the body, including inflammation and hormone imbalances. When stress levels are high, the body produces excess cortisol, which is intended for short-term “fight or flight” situations. Long-term high cortisol levels cause inflammation, which can lead to serious health problems like heart disease and diabetes. This hormone imbalance also affects appetite, making people crave sugary and fatty foods, which contributes to weight gain and unhealthy habits. Functional medicine addresses these issues by recommending anti-inflammatory diets, nutritional supplements, and lifestyle changes to reduce stress levels.
Functional medicine also emphasizes the importance of natural remedies and lifestyle adjustments to combat stress. Adaptogenic herbs like ashwagandha and rhodiola can help balance stress responses, while mind-body techniques such as yoga, meditation, and deep breathing are used to relax the mind and lower cortisol levels. Through a combination of proper nutrition, gut health support, and stress management techniques, functional medicine aims to tackle the root causes of stress and help individuals regain both mental and physical balance.
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STRESS CAN NEGATIVELY AFFECT YOUR HEALTH. IT CAN EVEN KILL.
Stress Can Negatively Affect Your Health
When the mind feels stress, it affects everything in your body. Your muscles and your nervous system are two of the most affected areas. Also strongly affected by stress are your hormones.
Oftentimes, our minds make mountains out of mole hills and things that were not really super stressful become magnified by our imaginations. Panic attacks are usually triggered by this type of over-exaggeration of stress in our minds.
What Causes Stress?
It is believed that the mind is often bored, and to keep itself busy, it creates problems for itself to solve. Whether we are focused on it or not, our minds stay busy working out problems that often are not real problems – and for some people, this can escalate into high levels of stress and mental fatigue.
Many people do not realize that their stress levels actually cause a change to take place in the brain, which affects our overall brain chemistry. The field of study that looks into these changes is known as psychoneuroimmunology. Type A personality folks struggle a great deal with these changes making it particularly difficult for them to relax.
When we are consistently overstimulated with stress, our bodies produce too many stress hormones like cortisol, noradrenaline, and adrenaline. Also the levels of serotonin and beta-endorphins are negatively affected, meaning that we have much less of them when we are stressed.
Stress from a Functional Medicine Perspective
Understanding Functional Medicine
Functional medicine is a systems biology–based approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of diseases. It views the body as an integrated system, rather than a collection of independent organs divided by medical specialties. This holistic approach is particularly useful in understanding and managing stress, as it considers the interconnectedness of physiological processes.
Stress and the Endocrine System
Stress has a profound impact on the endocrine system, particularly through the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Chronic stress leads to the prolonged secretion of cortisol, which can disrupt normal endocrine function. Elevated cortisol levels can impair thyroid function, reduce the production of sex hormones, and lead to adrenal fatigue. Functional medicine practitioners often measure hormone levels and utilize lifestyle and dietary interventions to restore balance.
Stress Can Cause Depression
When you don’t have enough serotonin, you feel down or depressed. Likewise, beta-endorphins are what give us self-esteem and without enough of them, we begin to doubt ourselves. When both serotonin and beta-endorphins are low, we tend to avoid people and places where we might run into people. We just want to stay in our homes and avoid the world altogether.
When stress levels are high for long periods of time and our serotonin and beta-endorphins are low, we begin to show personality changes. We also experience depression. When we think of depression, we often think of it as a state that exists in and of itself. Not many people link the existence of stress to the cause of depression.
Gut-Brain Axis and Stress
The gut-brain axis represents the bidirectional communication between the gastrointestinal tract and the central nervous system. Stress can alter gut microbiota composition, leading to dysbiosis, which further exacerbates stress and anxiety. Functional medicine emphasizes the importance of a healthy gut microbiome in managing stress. Probiotics, prebiotics, and a diet rich in fiber and fermented foods are often recommended to support gut health and mitigate stress responses.
Nutritional Interventions
Functional medicine recognizes the significant role of nutrition in managing stress. Nutrient deficiencies can exacerbate stress and contribute to its negative health effects. Key nutrients involved in stress response include magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids, B vitamins, and antioxidants. Functional medicine practitioners may recommend dietary changes or supplements to address specific deficiencies and support overall health.
Stress Can Cause Inflammation
How else can stress affect your body? Through inflammation. When stressful thoughts are allowed to continue in your mind, your cortisol levels are kept artificially high. Cortisol is a fight-or-flight response hormone, and our bodies are not supposed to experience it for long periods of time.
If you were being chased by a mountain lion, cortisol will give you the strength to hopefully outrun or fight the mountain lion. In every day situations, though, high levels of cortisol cause very high levels of inflammation.
Inflammation and Oxidative Stress
Chronic stress leads to systemic inflammation and oxidative stress, which are underlying factors in many chronic diseases. Functional medicine focuses on reducing inflammation through anti-inflammatory diets, which include foods rich in antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids. Additionally, lifestyle interventions such as regular physical activity and stress management techniques like mindfulness and meditation are recommended to lower inflammation levels.
Stress Can Cause Heart Disease and Diabetes
This same inflammation can lead to heart disease and diabetes. High cortisol levels also drive us to eat – especially carbohydrates and fat. We find ourselves craving carbs and fats even though we may be full. Not only does this increase our daily consumption of calories, but these specific foods then serve to inhibit our fat metabolism.
Diet is not always the sole cause of weight gain and the development of unhealthy conditions of the body. In cases like these, we need to first look to reducing our levels of mental stress and anxiety to get our bodies healthy.
The Role of Adaptogens
Adaptogens are a class of herbs that help the body adapt to stress and restore physiological balance. Common adaptogens used in functional medicine include ashwagandha, rhodiola, and holy basil. These herbs can modulate the HPA axis, reduce cortisol levels, and enhance resilience to stress. Functional medicine practitioners often incorporate adaptogens into treatment plans to support the body’s stress response.
Mind-Body Techniques
Functional medicine incorporates mind-body techniques such as yoga, meditation, and deep breathing exercises to manage stress. These practices have been shown to reduce cortisol levels, enhance parasympathetic nervous system activity, and improve overall well-being. Integrating these techniques into daily routines can provide significant benefits for stress reduction and health improvement.
So, can stress affect your body?
Yes. Stress is a silent killer. Do whatever you must to reduce your stress levels today. Yoga and meditation are great ways to reduce stress. You won’t believe what a relief it is to be out from under all of the stress. You will feel like a new person – one with a new lease on life.
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